It may indicate anything from respondents feeling the question was too simplistic to answer adequately, to having given the topic little thought, to being confused or conflicted about the issue. No doubt some will be thinking of the re—establishment of laws that promote socially conservative values. But others may mean specific changes to English family law, such as the legal recognition of Islamic religious marriage, which would be no bad thing see below.
As with the hudud, the reality is more complex. The particular example about testimony is subject to great debate and disagreement among modern Muslim scholars.
Today, some Muslim scholars argue that it was uncommon for women to be involved in commercial transactions in early Islam; the stipulation for two women as witnesses was not a comment on their mental capacity but a reflection of their likely lack of expertise in such matters, with one being able to support the other.
Some Muslims will therefore see this stipulation as unnecessary in a modern world with much greater female education. In the face of non—Muslim assumptions about their oppression, increasingly many Muslim women in the West and beyond are describing their religion, at its origins, as one of female liberation.
This is well documented in a range of recent studies, such as by Shelina Janmohamed [16] and Philip Lewis and Sadek Hamid. Of course we must be careful here. Moreover, undoubtedly there are clear differences between the rights of men and women in some areas of fiqh that offend the Western assumption that everyone should have identical rights.
But they are controversial and are sometimes accused of gender discrimination. In certain circumstances, primarily business disputes, Muslims are able to settle their affairs under Islamic legal norms, via the English law rules on arbitration.
The Arbitration Act allows people in a dispute formally to agree to have their issue resolved by a third party of their choice, the arbitrator. For a number of years Muslims have been making use of this process through an organisation called the Muslim Arbitration Tribunal MAT , which settles commercial disputes following Islamic principles but in a way that conforms with English law.
The vast majority of people who use their services are women, and their primary activity is facilitating the granting of a religious divorce to Muslim women. Occasionally, when a Muslim woman seeks an end to her religious marriage nikah , her husband may refuse to agree to the divorce. This puts the woman in a very difficult situation, because in Britain a nikah formed within Britain has no legal standing, unlike for example church marriages. This problem is compounded by the fact that many British Muslims do not get their religious marriages registered officially, often due to misunderstandings about the status of the nikah in English law.
With no civil marriage, women stuck in these situations have even less recourse to help from the courts. Women in such situations are in limbo. Abandoned by their husbands, they are considered unmarried in the eyes of the state and so cannot get financial help, but see themselves and are seen by their community as still married and unable to move on. Sometimes it will try to reconcile the couple, since the preservation of marriage is preferable to divorce in Islam.
But if reconciliation is impossible, the council will usually push the husband to grant the divorce. Sometimes, the council may declare an annulment of the marriage faskh unilaterally, for example if there is evidence of abuse, if the husband refuses to engage, or if a civil divorce is already under way. The councils are clearly providing a needed service for these women. But there was also evidence of bad practice.
In some councils, there are problems which disadvantage or even put at risk the women they are trying to help. Some insisted on mediation between the couple as a preliminary step in the process, which could be entirely inappropriate if the relationship was abusive. Sometimes the mediation could involve intrusive questioning about the relationship, or could be drawn out for several months. Some councils lacked proper safeguarding procedures, and few had women as actual panel members with some notable exceptions.
It recommended that legislation should be amended to require civil marriage to take place before or at the same time as an Islamic religious marriage, and to enable judges to refuse to grant a civil divorce to Muslim couples until the husband has granted his wife a religious divorce. These changes would help Muslim women in the future.
Now firmly entrenched in Medina, the Muslim community was able to defend itself against Meccan attacks and then to return to Mecca in victory. Over the last year of his life, Muhammad extended his dominion to the rest of the Arabian Peninsula, though both he and many of his most prominent followers continued to live in Medina. Then, ten years after the hijra, Muhammad died, leaving the Quran and his teachings to guide the way. Abi Talib, as his successor.
Unlike the majority of the Muslim community, the Shia came to believe that the Prophet Muhammad also left, in addition to the Quran and his teachings, infallible leaders from among his own descendants, known as imams. But even though substantially divergent theological views became entrenched, Sunnis and Shia were, as a practical matter, in agreement on most points of law. For this reason, and particularly in the twentieth century, there has been an attempt to transcend the Sunni-Shia divide by recognizing much Shia thought as another school of Islamic law that stands alongside the Sunni schools.
Despite these theological and political divisions, Muslims successfully forged a common law that bound both the ruler and the ruled, with the law emerging as a result of mutual discussion and debate.
A ruler did not, for instance, have special authority to interpret the content of the law or the meaning of its rule, at least according to the majority of Sunnis. So while the new Muslim empire was hardly the first in history to fuse the religious and the political, its manner was perhaps unique: unlike the Holy Roman Emperor, for example, a Muslim caliph did not lead public rituals as a high priest but in shared obligation with each person in the community—if circumstances required, the rituals could be performed by any them.
T he rapid expansion of the early Muslim state brought new problems. In the Umayyads formed the first dynasty in Islamic history, making Damascus their capital. The dynasty built its new capital city of Baghdad in Iraq and gave a prominent place in its administration to non-Arab converts—who hailed largely from the Persian-speaking populations of Iran and central Asia—even making room for the cultural contributions of numerous non-Muslim populations.
From within this newly cosmopolitan political framework emerged variant interpretations of Islamic law: the four schools that became widely recognized, applied, and practiced. Each of these Sunni legal schools held prominence in a particular region of the empire. And in the urban centers of the Middle East, particularly among the lower classes, were the Hanbalis, named after Ahmad b. Hanbal, a staunch traditionalist who rejected speculative reason.
One consequence of having four different circulating schools was the increasing frustration of civil administrators. Judges in one town, for example, might find a certain set of facts sufficient to prove intentional murder, but the judge in a neighboring town would refuse to find guilt on the same set of facts.
Anas and proposed to make the Muwatta the universal law of the empire. As a result, legal pluralism became a normative feature of applied Islamic law, with various regions of the Muslim world continuing to apply different versions of Islamic law, all of which were considered equally Islamic, despite their differences in various secondary doctrines. By the end of the fourth Islamic century, Islamic law was fully decentralized, with control over legal production, instruction, and transmission in the hands of scholars rather than the state.
Particularly in urban areas, the widespread availability of scholars in local institutions of worship gave nonspecialists ample opportunity to listen in on legal instruction and to ask questions of experts. Under their absolute rule, the Abbasids transferred substantial areas of criminal law from qadis to the government. And although the qadis continued to handle cases involving religious, family, property, and commercial law, the Abbasids encouraged legal scholars to further debate the Sharia vigorously.
As a result, a group of scholars started claiming that only the divinely inspired Quran and teachings of the Prophet Muhammad should make up the Sharia. Another separate group, however, argued that the Sharia should also include the reasoned opinions of qualified legal scholars.
Thus different legal systems began to develop in the various provinces threatening to separate Sharia and Muslim community with different legal interprets. To eliminate discordant views, the Abbasid vigorously sought to reconcile the rival views.
Shafii argued that in solving a legal question, the qadi or government judges should first consult the Quran. If the answers were not clear there, the judges then should refer to the authentic sayings and decisions of Muhammad. If the answers continued to elude the judges, they subsequently should follow and refer to the consensus of Muslim legal scholars on the matter. By the year , the classic Sharia was formed and established.
Although some concepts and institutions have developed since that time, Shafi's understanding of Sharia law ground these new developments. Additionally, Sharia law has taken its place at the primary law governing the behavior of Muslims.
The process was backed up by unified handbooks with examples, assembled by Islamic specialists in the law and prepared for Islamic judges to use in their decision makings. It is derived from the Quran, Islam's holy book, as well as the Sunnah and Hadith - the deeds and sayings of the Prophet Muhammad. Where an answer cannot be derived directly from these, religious scholars may give rulings as guidance on a particular topic or question.
In Arabic, Sharia literally means "the clear, well-trodden path to water". Sharia acts as a code for living that all Muslims should adhere to, including prayers, fasting and donations to the poor. It aims to help Muslims understand how they should lead every aspect of their lives according to God's wishes. Sharia can inform every aspect of daily life for a Muslim. For example, a Muslim wondering what to do if their colleagues invite them to the pub after work may turn to a Sharia scholar for advice to ensure they act within the legal framework of their religion.
Other areas of daily life where Muslims may turn to Sharia for guidance include family law, finance and business. Like any legal system, Sharia is complex and its practice is entirely reliant on the quality and training of experts. Islamic jurists issue guidance and rulings.
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