Sharia Book Pdf

[Magdalen Jhonston]

Shariaʃəˈriːə/; Arabic: شَرِيعَة, romanized: sharīʿah, .mw-parser-output .IPA-label-smallfont-size:85%.mw-parser-output .references .IPA-label-small,.mw-parser-output .infobox .IPA-label-small,.mw-parser-output .navbox .IPA-label-smallfont-size:100%IPA: [ʃaˈriːʕa]) is a body of religious law that forms a part of the Islamic tradition[1][2][3] based on scriptures of Islam, particularly the Quran and hadith.[1] In Arabic, the term sharīʿah refers to God's immutable divine law and this is contrasted with fiqh, which refers to its interpretations by Islamic scholars.[4][5][6] Fiqh, practical application side of sharia in a sense, was elaborated over the centuries by legal opinions issued by qualified jurists and sharia has never been the sole valid legal system in Islam historically; it has always been used alongside customary law from the beginning,[7][8] and applied in courts by ruler-appointed judges,[4][6] integrated with various economic, criminal and administrative laws issued by Muslim rulers.[9]

Over time with the necessities brought by sociological changes, on the basis of mentioned interpretative studies legal schools have emerged, reflecting the preferences of particular societies and governments, as well as Islamic scholars or imams on theoretical and practical applications of laws and regulations. Although sharia is presented as a form of governance[10] in addition to its other aspects (especially by the contemporary Islamist understanding), some researchers see the early history of Islam, which has been modelled and exalted by most Muslims, not as a period when sharia was dominant, but a kind of "secular Arabic expansion".[11][12]

According to human rights groups, some of the classical sharia practices involve serious violations of basic human rights, gender equality and freedom of expression, and the practices of countries governed by sharia are criticized.[19] The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg (ECtHR) ruled in several cases that sharia is "incompatible with the fundamental principles of democracy".[20][21] Approaches to sharia in the 21st century vary widely, and the role and mutability of sharia[22] in a changing world has become an increasingly debated topic in Islam.[5] Beyond sectarian differences, fundamentalists advocate the complete and uncompromising implementation of "exact/pure sharia" without modifications,[2][23] while modernists argue that it can/should be brought into line with human rights and other contemporary issues such as democracy, minority rights, freedom of thought, women's rights and banking by new jurisprudences.[24][25][26] In Muslim majority countries, traditional laws have been widely used with[5][27] or changed by European models. Judicial procedures and legal education have been brought in line with European practice likewise.[5] While the constitutions of most Muslim-majority states contain references to sharia, its rules are largely retained only in family law.[5] The Islamic revival of the late 20th century brought calls by Islamic movements for full implementation of sharia, including hudud corporal punishments, such as stoning.[5][28]

The word sharīʿah is used by Arabic-speaking peoples of the Middle East to designate a prophetic religion in its totality.[29] For example, sharīʿat Mūsā means law or religion of Moses and sharīʿatu-nā can mean "our religion" in reference to any monotheistic faith.[29] Within Islamic discourse, šarīʿah refers to religious regulations governing the lives of Muslims.[29] For many Muslims, the word means simply "justice," and they will consider any law that promotes justice and social welfare to conform to Sharia.[5] Sharia is the first of Four Doors and the lowest level on the path to God in Sufism and in branches of Islam that are influenced by Sufism, such as Ismailism and Alawites. It is necessary to reach from Sharia to Tariqa, from there to Ma'rifa and finally to haqiqa. In each of these gates, there are 10 levels that the dervish must pass through.[30]

A related term al-qānūn al-islāmī (القانون الإسلامي, Islamic law), which was borrowed from European usage in the late 19th century, is used in the Muslim world to refer to a legal system in the context of a modern state.[32]

The primary meanings of the Arabic word šarīʿah, derived from the root š-r-ʕ.[29] The lexicographical studies records two major areas of the word can appear without religious connotation. In texts evoking a pastoral or nomadic environment, šarīʿah and its derivatives refers to watering animals at a permanent water-hole or to the seashore. One another area of use relates to notions of stretched or lengthy.[33] The word is cognate with the Hebrew saraʿ שָׂרַע and is likely to be the origin of the meaning "way" or "path".[33] Some scholars describe it as an archaic Arabic word denoting "pathway to be followed" (analogous to the Hebrew term Halakhah ["The Way to Go"]),[34] or "path to the water hole"[35][36] and argue that its adoption as a metaphor for a divinely ordained way of life arises from the importance of water in an arid desert environment.[36]

Some articles that may be considered precursors of sharia law and rituals can be found in the pre-Islamic Arabic Religions; Hajj, salāt and zakāt could be seen in pre-Islamic Safaitic-Arabic inscriptions,[41] and continuity can be observed in many details, especially in todays hajj and umrah rituals.[42] Qisas was a practice used as a resolution tool in inter-tribal conflicts in pre-Islamic Arab society. The basis of this resolution was that a member from the tribe to which the murderer belonged was handed over to the victim's family for execution, equivalent to the social status of the murdered person.[43] The "condition of social equivalence" meant the execution of a member of the murderer's tribe who was equivalent to the murdered person. For example, only a slave could be killed for a slave, and a woman for a woman. In other cases, compensatory payment (Diya) could be paid to the family of the murdered. On top of this pre-Islamic understanding added a debate about whether a Muslim can be executed for a non-Muslim during the Islamic period. The main verse for implementation in Islam is Al Baqara 178: "Believers! Retaliation is ordained for you regarding the people who were killed. Free versus free, slave versus slave, woman versus woman. Whoever is forgiven by the brother of the slain for a price, let him abide by the custom and pay the price well."

According to the traditionalist (Atharī) Muslim view, the major precepts of Sharia were passed down directly from the Islamic prophet Muhammad without "historical development"[44] and the emergence of Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh) also goes back to the lifetime of Muhammad.[5][6] In this view, his companions and followers took what he did and approved of as a model (sunnah) and transmitted this information to the succeeding generations in the form of hadith.[5][6] These reports led first to informal discussion and then systematic legal thought, articulated with greatest success in the eighth and ninth centuries by the master jurists Abu Hanifa, Malik ibn Anas, al-Shafi'i, and Ahmad ibn Hanbal, who are viewed as the founders of the Hanafi, Maliki, Shafiʿi, and Hanbali legal schools (madhāhib) of Sunni jurisprudence.[6]

Modern historians have presented alternative theories of the formation of fiqh.[5][6] At first Western scholars accepted the general outlines of the traditionalist account.[45] In the late 19th century, an influential revisionist hypothesis was advanced by Ignc Goldziher and elaborated by Joseph Schacht in the mid-20th century.[6] Schacht and other scholars[46] argued that having conquered much more populous agricultural and urban societies with already existing laws and legal needs, the initial Muslim efforts to formulate legal norms[note 2]regarded the Quran[note 3] and Muhammad's hadiths as just one source of law,[note 4] with jurist personal opinions, the legal practice of conquered peoples, and the decrees and decisions of the caliphs also being valid sources.[51]

According to this theory, most canonical hadiths did not originate with Muhammad but were actually created at a later date, despite the efforts of hadith scholars to weed out fabrications.[note 5]After it became accepted that legal norms must be formally grounded in scriptural sources, proponents of rules of jurisprudence supported by the hadith would extend the chains of transmission of the hadith back to Muhammad's companions.[6] In his view, the real architect of Islamic jurisprudence was al-Shafi'i (died 820 CE/204 AH), who formulated this idea (that legal norms must be formally grounded in scriptural sources) and other elements of classical legal theory in his work al-risala,[6][45] but who was preceded by a body of Islamic law not based on primacy of Muhammad's hadiths.

While the origin of hadith remains a subject of scholarly controversy, this theory (of Goldziher and Schacht) has given rise to objections, and modern historians generally adopt more cautious, intermediate positions,[45]and it is generally accepted that early Islamic jurisprudence developed out of a combination of administrative and popular practices shaped by the religious and ethical precepts of Islam.[53][5][54] It continued some aspects of pre-Islamic laws and customs of the lands that fell under Muslim rule in the aftermath of the early conquests and modified other aspects, aiming to meet the practical need of establishing Islamic norms of behavior and adjudicating disputes arising in the early Muslim communities.[55] Juristic thought gradually developed in study circles, where independent scholars met to learn from a local master and discuss religious topics.[55][56] At first, these circles were fluid in their membership, but with time distinct regional legal schools crystallized around shared sets of methodological principles.[5][56] As the boundaries of the schools became clearly delineated, the authority of their doctrinal tenets came to be vested in a master jurist from earlier times, who was henceforth identified as the school's founder.[5][56] In the course of the first three centuries of Islam, all legal schools came to accept the broad outlines of classical legal theory, according to which Islamic law had to be firmly rooted in the Quran and hadith.[5][57]

3a8082e126