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The Quran and Sharia:
God’s Teachings to Humanity

      The Quran is God’s divine word and last covenant with humans, and it was spoken on earth through the messenger of God, Muhammad. The Quran is the absolute, word of God which is to be memorized, but not questioned, by the Muslim people. The Sharia is the body of God’s commandments to humans on how to behave on earth, and its first expression is in the Quran. The combination of the Quran and the Sharia cover almost any situation in life that a person may encounter, and they establish the guidelines for correct Muslim behavior. Muslims understand that the Quran and the Sharia come directly from God and are therefore unquestionable and unchangeable. Along with the Quran are the Hadith sayings (additional teachings by Muhammad), and these are also considered to be inspired by God. The Quran and the Hadith are thought to be the infallible source of Sharia teachings, but later judges interpreted these teachings according to their understanding of God’s will.

The Quran

     The Quran is the final Divine revelation to the people on earth, and it updates the imperfect understandings of the Hebrew and Christian Bibles. God has provided a succession of prophets throughout human history, and their teachings have all been the same to faithfully follow the One True God. The message of each prophet has been correct and followed a sequence of stages based on the human capacity to understand it. Each message has superseded the previous one, giving new directions and understandings of God’s work.
      The Quran does not directly address all of the ritual, legal, political, social, and economic issues that come up in the vastly different daily lives of Muslims in Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and the West, let alone the differences between urban people in the global economy, the small farmers in villages, and the desert Bedouin. Muslims expect to find the spiritual guidelines in the Quran for any life issue that might come up, but not all are explained with the clearness and detail for contemporary people to understand, so the sections have to be interpreted and explained by those who are trained in Sharia. The first interpreter of the meaning of the Quran was the Prophet Muhammad. He had the kitab (meaning the written book or the Quran) and he also had hikma (or wisdom), which can be seen in the actions of his life and which other people can apply in their own lives. In essence, all of his sayings (Hadith) and actions were divinely inspired and gave examples of how to live. In this way his life was an extension of the Quran in understanding good and evil. The Quran is God’s direct message to humanity, and because of its divine origin it has the truest instructions for religious belief and practice and everyday behavior. The Quran is the final and most perfect revelation from God.
The revelations spoken by Muhammad were recorded in the Quran, and as the direct word of God, they are the creed of Islam. The central belief of Islam is in the omnipotence and absolute unity of God, and they accept Muhammad as the last of the prophets who completed the work initiated by Abraham. "There is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is the messenger of Allah." This is the Muslim confession of faith in God, monotheism, and the role of Muhammad as the prophet or messenger. In Islam, God is one and undivided, and Muslims see the division of God into three parts in Christianity as a corruption of the original pure monotheism practiced by Abraham. Muslims believe that God existed in the beginning and is the creator of all things, and in the final Day of Judgment God will save the true ones who have submitted to his will and worshiped him. There are one hundred names of Allah, ninety-nine of which are spoken, and those ninety-nine names may be repeated in prayer or worship. The unspoken name of God is only for contemplation. Allah is known as the God of mercy, and in the Quran there are 192 references to mercy while wrath and vengeance are mentioned only seventeen times.
The second half of the profession of faith affirms Muhammad's position as a prophet. God has historically revealed himself to people through prophets, and Muhammad was the last one. God cannot be actually seen because his appearance is too powerful, so he communicates through intermediaries such as the archangel Gabriel. There is no pretension that Muhammad was divine, and he did not have supernatural powers. The Quran is the record of God's word revealed through Muhammad, and it is understood to be the correct and final revelation to humankind. In Islam it is the Quran, not the Prophet Muhammad that is of divine origin, so the Quran takes the centrality in the practice of Islam that Christ has in Christianity. Angels also have a place in Islam, and it was the archangel Gabriel whom God used to reveal his will to Muhammad. But, there is little other information about angels. Muslims believe in the Devil as a fallen angel, a belief they share with Christians and Zoroastrians. The Devil and his followers try to thwart God's will, but they are limited by God's power. In the Last Judgment, people are sent to Heaven or Hell, depending on whether or not they submitted to God in this life.
There are evil forces in life led by Satan, and they choose not to obey Allah. After creating human beings, Allah told the angels to bow before them in deference, but Satan refused. His disobedience to Allah led to his expulsion from Heaven. The evil spirits that follow Satan are called jinns, and they are to be found in all parts of the world. Allah ordered the angels to kill the jinns at one point, but they did not accomplish their task, so Satan and the jinns are ever present in the world today tempting people to do evil. Allah will judge the people who give into temptation and commit evil acts. A person has two angels, one on each shoulder, and one writes down the good deeds and the other the bad ones. On the Day of Judgment each person will appear before Allah and the annotations of the deeds will be reviewed. People who have not accepted Allah and followed His precepts will go to Hell to join Satan and the jinns.
Muslims believe that all of the truth of Islam is contained in the sacred text of the Quran. The beauty of the Arabic language in the Quran is greatly admired, and much of it is written in poetic stanzas. Although the Quran describes the heavenly paradise where believers will go after death, no specific description of God is given, so that the image of God cannot be reified in an anthropomorphic sense. God is not portrayed in human form as in Christianity. Muslims are expected to read the Quran and pray in Arabic even though it is not their native language. The fact that Islam has a common language has given it a universalism in which people from many different parts of the world can understand each other religiously.
Sharia:
Code of Conduct Based on God’s Will

      Sharia is a system of teachings about what is correct behavior laid down in the Quran by the Prophet Muhammad and further demonstrated in the example of his life and the rulings that he gave in specific cases in his lifetime (the Sunna). Sharia law is intended to create just society where the state, religion, and the citizens live in harmony. The interpretations of Muslim scholars over the first two centuries of Islam are also included in the Sharia. The Quran and the Sunna are understood to be infallible, but they do not address all of the issues that emerge in daily life in each new historical epoch, which requires continual interpretation and judgment by each generation of Muslims scholars. On the one hand, Sharia law regulates worship and ritual practice, and on the other it addresses judicial issues, such as family law, marriage, and inheritance.
      How Sharia Works. The Sharia is the frontier between law and ideology. Sharia is focused on building a stable social order based on divine rules rather than being an abstract system of right and wrong based on philosophical reasoning. Sharia is the definition of how to live in a Muslim society, and even non-Muslims living that society are expected to basically follow it. On the contrary, a Muslim living or traveling in the West is not expected to comply rigorously with Sharia rules. Today the Sharia is most rigorously followed in those parts of the Muslim world that are more Islamized and less secular, such as Saudi Arabia and Iran.
      When new issues emerge that are not clarified in the Quran or the Sunna, a liberal Muslim jurist can use analogies (qiyas) to make a decision about the correct behavior. These analogies must be based on logic and rational reasoning to withstand the juridical scrutiny of fellow judges. The strict constructionists do not allow the use of qiyas because they involve human reasoning which they consider to be fallible. Since there is no one centralized authority in Islam, different jurists can give different opinions, and not all opinions will be accepted by other jurists. Since the principles of the Sharia are rooted in the Quran and the life of Muhammad, they are understood to also be divinely inspired.
      Although the Quran and the life of Muhammad are the first order of authority for the Sharia, if there is no information in those two sources about the issue in question, the judge can use his own judgment to interpret God’s will. The decision of each judge then becomes a reference case for later judges. The decisions by these early judges sometimes referenced older Arabic law systems, including Meccan commercial law and agrarian law from Medina. They could even draw from the legal codes of the Greco-Roman world as well as those of the Sassanid Empire which occupied old Persia.
      During the earliest period of Islam, Sharia law was not an independent discipline with full time judges, but rather it was the practical interpretation of religious teaching as applied to everyday life. Muhammad saw no distinction between “legal” and “religious” issues, and both were understood to be one fused reality. Later, during the Abbasid period a distinction began to emerge between ilm, or empirical/positive knowledge consistent with theology, and fiqh, or understanding/law derived from religious teachings. Figh is called the science of the Sharia, and it has been compiled into a number of books which are used by students and religious scholars. There are various schools or traditions of how to interpret the Sharia, and each uses the figh books. Only the head religious scholar/judge of a school of Sharia has the right to issue public legal opinions (fatwas) based on his interpretations of the figh.
      Although Islam does not have a hierarchy of clergy that intervenes between the faithful and God, there is a class of Muslim scholars and jurists who are recognized as the interpreters of religious law. This class of religious scholars has the de facto authority in the community to render decisions about correct belief, ritual, and behavior. They are called the Ulama, the community of scholars. When the Ulama has consensus, its conclusions are considered to be binding and irrevocable. The decisions of the Ulama combined with the divinely inspired nature of the Quran and the Sharia create a rigid structure of belief and practice in Islam that allows only a narrow range of possibilities for change. The authority of the Quran, Sharia, and Ulama cannot be questioned. To disobey (or even not rigorously follow) the teachings of this authority is to challenge the Divine itself and incurs punishment in this life or the afterlife.
      The punishments ordered under Sharia are criticized by many in the West as harsh by today’s standards. For example, capital punishment is meted out for a number of crimes, including adultery, and a hand may be severed for theft. In contrast, hands are not severed in other parts of the world and capital punishment has been abolished in the industrialized world and Latin America, except for the United States. In spite of these seemingly harsh sentences, Muslim scholars point out that capital punishment is in fact rarely used in the Muslim world where there are fewer executions than in the United States. So, they suggest that Sharia law threatens harsh punishment as a deterrent to criminals although it is rarely practiced. Moderate Muslim scholars today argue that Muhammad would not have used such harsh punishments if he had access to the rehabilitation services available in the modern wealthy societies.
      The Sharia is as much religious duty as it is law. It is not so much a formal law code, as it is a body of teachings and the focus of discussions about correct behavior. If there is not a specific injunction against a behavior or an analogy that applies, it is thought to be permitted. Muslim belief says that God created humans with free will and that they use it to determine the degree to which they follow religious law. If people follow the Sharia, they are using their free will correctly, but if they do not follow it, they are abusing their free will and committing a grievous religious fault.
      The Practice of Sharia Law Today. Just as the Muslim world is fragmented into thirty-five nation-states, it is also fragmented in the practice of Sharia. Saudi Arabia (Sunni) and Iran (Shi’ite) are the only two countries with religious courts for all jurisprudence with no secular system of law. Sudan and Libya also implement Sharia law, but they also have secular provisions. The Taliban also relied exclusively on religious courts for jurisprudence during their period of rule in Afghanistan. Sharia law has also been adopted in the Muslim areas of northern Nigeria, but its implementation has been focused primarily on punishment. The Nigerian example has not included the strict rules of evidence required in the traditional practice of Sharia, making it somewhat different from its application in the Arab parts of the Muslim world. At the other extreme are the countries with largely secular legal systems which include Turkey and the Muslim republics of South Asia (Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Indonesia) and Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan). These countries do have a few Islamic provisions to cover family issues. It is notable that these countries have not been arabized and maintain their own unique ethnic identity. In the Sunni world, the degree of contemporary strict implementation of the Sharia seems to be somewhat related to the degree of arabization of the culture. The implementation of Sharia law varies widely across the Muslim world from the more or less lenient practices of South Asia to the stricter ones of Saudi Arabia.
      Islamist movements that have arisen in recent decades have created renewed interest in the Sharia and in creating Muslim societies based on Islamic law. In the early twentieth century colonialism had devaluated Muslim institutions and authority. According to Khaled M. Abou El Fadl, this loss of traditional Muslim authority created a backlash. He says,
      ...In this intellectual vacuum, Puritanism and religious extremism found ample space for growth. The Puritanism of the late 1970s and 1980s reflected a rabid hostility to all forms of academic social knowledge or critical intellectualism. However, this hostility was not directed only at Western or Eastern social and political theories, but at the Islamic intellectual tradition as well. Classical intellectual orientations such as Mu’tazilism, Ash’arism, Maturidism, the whole juristic tradition of disputation and deductive reasoning, and the theology of Sufism were considered as aberration and corruption.
He goes on to suggest that the Wahabi school of thought which does a strict interpretation of Sharia has become the dominant thought in the Muslim world. Sharia is at the core of the controversy between fundamentalists and modernists in the Muslim world. Fundamentalists advocate an interpretation of the Sharia restricted to the writings of the Quran, the Hadith, and the life of Muhammad while the modernists advocate that the additional use of the Sunna and contemporary interpretations.
      Key Content of Sharia Law. To understand some examples of Sharia law helps define more clearly what it is. It covers issues of gender and family law, dietary regulations, faith and practice of Islam, and many others.
      Circumcision. Following the commandment of God to Abraham that the true believers should be circumcised, it is the religious custom in the Muslim world for men to be circumcised, which means the cutting away of the foreskin of the penis. The age at which it is performed and the kind of ceremony varies from one part of the Muslim world to another. In East Africa, Muslims (and non-Muslims including Christians) also practice female circumcision. Although it was a pre-Islamic cultural practice, some African Muslims believe that it is required in Islam. Although Muslim religious authorities have repeatedly stated that female circumcision is not a religious obligation, many continue to favor it. Depending on the group, this practice can vary from a relatively minor alteration of the labia to a complete surgical removal of the genitalia. The latter practice has been widely denounced internationally.
      Marriage. Muslims are expected to marry other Muslims, and they are prohibited from marrying non-believers, which means people of a non-Abrahamic religion. Men may marry a woman of the “People of the Book”, i.e. Jewish or Christian, but women cannot do so unless the man converts to Islam. According to Islamic law men and women may divorce their spouse for any reason, simply by saying “I divorce you” three times before witnesses, but in practice most Muslim governments have other legal requirements before the divorce is finalized. One religious court recently ruled that a man could divorce his wife by text messaging if the message were clearly stated with no room for doubt. By law the divorced woman keeps the dowry that she received for the wedding, as well as any property that she owns, and she is given child support for any small child still nursing. After the child is weaned, she is considered to be independent, and the child may go with the father or mother, depending on which is considered to be most appropriate.
      Correct Behavior in Marriage. Within marriage a man is supposed to protect and care for his wife and provide for her in the manner that she was accustomed to living before marriage. The woman may work, but she cannot be a religious scholar or an Imam of the mosque. Sharia law makes clear that the woman is responsible for the housework and caring for both her parents and the husband’s parents. The woman is expected to be subordinate and obedient to the husband. If a woman is disobedient, the husband should first warn her verbally to correct her ways, and if she continues to be disobedient, the husband should refrain from any intimate relationship with her for a time. If she continues to be disobedient after that, the husband is authorized to hit her lightly. Many religious scholars emphasize that it is definitely better not to hit the women even if she is disobedient, but it can be used in extreme cases. Honor killings are not sanctioned within the Sharia, and when it is done in the Muslim world, the people are following non-Islamic cultural practices. Although the Sharia envisions a quiet domestic life for women, many women work today throughout the Muslim world. Women are exhorted to not have important jobs and to not work in the government. However, twenty-first century Muslim women work in many professional and lower class positions, and many have been heads of state or of the government as the case may be. Khaleda Zia and Sheikh Hasina have been heads of the government in Bangladesh, Megawati Sukarnoputri in Indonesia, Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan, and Tansu Ciller in Turkey. All of these are secular governments that do not apply Sharia law. Women have also held other prominent positions in both government and private industry in the Muslim world.
      Modesty of Dress. Both men and women are expected to dress modestly, but it is most important for women. The Quran says that a woman should not shown her hair or the shape of her body to men who are not of the family, and that she should lower her eyes so as to not look in the eyes of another man. She may show her face, hands, and feet, and this has led to the practice of Muslim women wearing the chador, a robe like garment that only exposes those features. This requirement is interpreted in different ways in different societies. In the more liberal Central and Southeast Asian Muslim societies (i.e. Kazakhstan, Kyrgystan, Indonesia or Malaysia), women may need only a headscarf in addition to their regular modest dress. In the more strict Arab countries (i.e. Saudi Arabia and parts of the Middle East) women wear the chador mentioned above, which may or may not include veiling. In the most-strict ones (i.e. Afghanistan and Pakistan) women wear a burqah, which is a tent-like covering of the entire body including the face. In only one country in the Middle East are these dress codes relaxed, Turkey. In that country it is illegal to wear the head scarf in public schools or any other public office building. Men also have a dress code, but it only requires the man to be covered from the waist to the knees. The dress requirement is to avoid that either a man or women should be viewed in sexual terms. Compliance with the ideal of modesty in dress depends on an individual’s personal level of religious observance. So, in every society there are variations in observance of dress codes depending whether the person is more or less religious.
      Dietary laws. There are a number of prohibited meats, including pork, dog, cat, monkey and carnivores among others. Lamb is the preferred meat in much of the Muslim world. The animal must be killed in a quick and relatively painless way, and the blood should be drained completely from the animal so that the blood is not eaten with the meat. The animal should be butchered in the name of God by a Muslim, and the preferred method of killing the animal is cutting the jugular vein so that it bleeds to death quickly. The meat of an animal killed by a Jew or Christian is also acceptable if the dietary rules are followed. Jewish kosher practices are essentially the same as those in Islam because the dietary laws in the books of Moses are similar, so Muslims can eat kosher meat.
Ethical Conduct. Muhammad's revelations in the Quran gave detailed guidelines for correct behavior toward other people. His teachings emphasized inclusive behaviors and brotherhood in contrast to the divisive behavior of tribal life that existed in the Arabia of his lifetime. He taught that all people were equal which led to the opposition of the Arab elite of his day, but it laid the foundations for latter Islam which has wide a following in Asia, as well as the Middle East and Africa. Islam has the best record of race and ethnic relationships of any of the major religions.
Moral behavior in Islam also includes a prohibition on drinking alcoholic beverages, gambling, and sexual immorality. Eating wholesome foods and having a healthy life are religious obligations because the believer should care for the body as well as the spirit.
Islam gave a higher status to women (in many aspects higher than Judaism or Christianity of that day), and it specified gender relationships between men and women. Women have the right to own property and have their own earnings, and they frequently keep their own family name after marriage. Ideally a Muslim woman has a dowry which she controls, and that guarantees her a certain degree of financial independence. Both men and women are expected to dress modestly, and for women that may even include veiling. The rules for marriage were made more restrictive, but women were given the opportunity to study more. The practice of female infanticide was prohibited. Muhammad approved the practice of polygyny in part as a protection for widows. In the Arab world at that time there was a high death rate for men because of the on-going wars that had racked the region, and many widows were left. They were given the right to re-marry, which was a progressive measure at the time, and polygyny solved that imbalance of numbers between the sexes.
Jihad (struggle) has multiple meanings. The Greater Jihad is the struggle against evil that each person carries on in their interior. Jihad is also a collective obligation, and it refers to defending Muslims and expanding the sphere of influence of Islam in the world. Muslims are given the charge to spread the word of Allah to the entire world although the beliefs of Jews and Christians are to be respected. Conversions to Islam should never to forced, and Muslims should not be compelled into behaviors in which they do not believe.
It can refer to two kinds of struggles. First is the spiritual struggle of the faithful with their hedonistic or egoistic desires. These must be overcome to find unity with God. The other jihad is a physical struggle or war which may be invoked as a last resort in a conflict. Jihad is subject to the sacred law of the Quran which lays down stringent rules. Fighting can only occur in self-defense, in defense of the faith, or for those who have been forced from their homes. It is prohibited to harm civilians or destroy the crops, trees, and livestock (the means of livelihood) in war. The Quran says, “Fight for the sake of God those that fight against you, but do not attack them first. God does not love aggressors.” As also happens with people in Christianity and Judaism, moral and ethical standards are sometimes the victims of the anger and conflict of battle, and people commit violence that the Quran does not support.
The Five Pillars of the Faith. The religious practice of Islam is organized around five sets of behaviors which a faithful Muslim should carry out in his or her life, including the confession of faith, prayer, almsgiving, fasting, and the pilgrimage to Mecca.
1. Declaration of faith (Shahada). "There is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is the messenger of Allah." By making this statement a person confesses their faith in the one and only God and identifies themselves as submitting to him and being a Muslim. This statement is not a one-time formulaic confession, but it is a phrase that a person hears regularly in the Muslim world, reaffirming the recognition of God. A person converts to Islam by making this statement in front of three Muslim witnesses.
2. Prayer (Salat). Five times each day a faithful Muslim does devotion and prayer, at dawn, noon, mid-afternoon, sunset, and nightfall. Before praying the person should wash. Then the person rolls out their prayer rug and kneels toward Mecca to pray. Muslim prayer is an expression of praise to God and submission to his will, rather than making requests to be granted from God. Prayers are commonly a repetition of the Fatihah, the Muslim equivalent of the Lord's Prayer.
In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful.
Praise be to God, Lord of the Universe,
The Compassionate, the Merciful,
Sovereign of the Day of Judgment.
You alone we worship, and to You alone we turn for help.
Guide us to the straight path,
The path of those whom You have favored,
Not of those who have incurred Your wrath,
Nor of those who have gone astray.
Five times a day the muezzin calls the faithful to prayer from the minaret or over a loudspeaker system. A person may pray in the mosque, at home, in the business, in the desert, or any other place where they are. The most important prayer in the mosque is Friday at noon. Men and women arrive and enter by different entrances, and they are separated by a screen inside the mosque. Sometimes women are on the second floor. The person leaves their shoes at the door, does their ablutions (washing hands, mouth, nostrils, face, forearms, neck, and feet), and enters their gender-specific section of the mosque to pray, read the Quran, and meditate before the service starts. A reader may be reading or reciting from the Quran during this time. When the imam (prayer leader and head of the mosque) enters, everyone has placed themselves in rows facing Mecca ready to begin the group prayer service. The imam leads the prayer, and everyone follows his example as he stands, kneels, and prostrates (forehead to the floor) himself before God. The prayers are in Arabic. Afterwards, the imam or some other person speaks to the assembled group about the Muslim life and beliefs which may range from doctrinal issues, to being good parents, or good citizens.
3. Almsgiving (Zakat). A Muslim is expected to give alms (or a tithe) to the mosque or to the poor. In addition to being a religious obligation, Muslims believe that the giving of alms to others purifies their possessions. In religiously based kingdoms this has been collected sometimes as a tax which was then re-distributed as needed for religious and social causes. Although people are encouraged to give in secret, the poor frequently gather at the mosque as people leave the Friday noon prayers to receive alms in public from the more affluent.
4. Fasting (Sawm). During the month of Ramadan the faithful fast from dawn to dusk in memory of the month when Muhammad received his first revelations from God. This is also a special time of spiritual devotion and renewal when the faithful should consider their lives and meditate on the greatness of God.
5. Pilgrimage (Hajj). Muslims face Mecca when they pray, and it is the focal point of the practice of Islam.  People are expected to make the pilgrimage to Mecca at least one time in their lives. Some two million Muslims come to Mecca during the last month of the Muslim calendar each year on this pilgrimage. The most holy site within this Holy City is the Great Mosque with the Kabah at its center. It has been expanded in recent years to hold as many as 700,000 worshipers at a time. The pilgrim should do seven turns around the Kabah, and each time as they pass the Black Stone, they should ideally kiss it or at least touch it. Other festival activities at this time of the year include retracing Hagar’s frantic search for water for the infant Ishmael and a pilgrimage to Arafat, which is nearby. They make the trip to Medina in memory of Muhammad’s flight to that city to save himself and his followers from their enemies. Two million or more pilgrims can be in Mecca during the sacred month of pilgrimage each year. For centuries pilgrims arrived overland by caravan for the pilgrimage to Mecca, but today they arrive by chartered airplanes. The cost of the pilgrimage is considerable, and many poor Muslims are never able to carry out this last pillar of the faith. Those who do make the pilgrimage to Mecca have a special prestige upon returning to their communities and sometimes wear a distinctive sign indicating that they have completed this last pillar of the faith. As the Holy City of Islam, Mecca is also an important center for the study of religion, and throughout the year scholars and teachers come to the city for study.
      The Schools of Sharia. The Quran, the Hadith, and the traditional commentaries surrounding them are believed to be infallible. Since neither gave a systematic statement of Muslim law, Quranic interpreters created systems or schools of Muslim jurisprudence. In Sunni Islam, there are four schools of interpretation of the Sharia, and they co-exist peacefully. In fact, it is common for the students in one school of thought to study the decisions of the other schools, and a judge may borrow an interpretation from another school if he thinks it is appropriate. Within each school there is a wide range of opinion about the various issues being discussed, and scholars in the same school may rule differently on a behavior, some saying it is forbidden and others that it is desirous. There can be considerable fluidity of opinion, but if a consensus is reached, then the agreement becomes locked in place as a new law.
      The various schools of Sharia each developed from the teachings of a historically important religious scholar. The most important schools are Hanafi, Hanbali, and Maliki.

• Hanafi School, the Iraqi School. Imam Abu Hanifa was the founder of this orientation of interpreting Muslim law although he never established a formal school. He was born in Iraq in 700 C.E., and he worked as a textile merchant, dedicating his free time to the study of Muslim law. The Hanafi School is known for the pluralism of opinions among its followers which makes it more flexible than the other schools. This school is particularly important in Central Asia from Afghanistan through Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan to Kazakhstan. It is also important in some of the North African countries, and in Egypt it is the recognized as the official school of Sharia law.
• Hanbali School, the fundamentalist school. Ahmad bin Hanbal was the founder of this school. Although he did not found a formal school, he taught students in Baghdad where he worked much of his life. This is the most traditional and inflexible of the various schools of Sharia study. Hanbal accepted only the Quran and Hadith as authoritative sources, rejecting the interpretations and analogies made by later scholars. This is the strict constructionist interpretation of Muslim law which does not accept human rational deductions based on earlier law. This permits the Hanbali School to claim infallibility in its conclusions. This school was historically important in Iraq and Syria, but over the last two centuries it has become the dominant school of the conservative Wahhabi movement in Saudi Arabia, and it is the legal basis of the modern Islamist groups.
• Maliki School, the African School. This school is based on the work of Malik bin Anas whose teachings are recorded in the oldest surviving Muslim law book, Kitab al-Muwatta’. It is a survey of the consensus of the believers about the proper practice of justice, ritual, and religious behavior in Medina in the eighth century C.E. Malik drew from the actual exercise of law in Medina, which also included non-Muslim elements. Law in Medina was not a tightly integrated code and included contradictory interpretations. When there were contrasting decisions on a single subject, Malik tried to smooth the differences between them, and he frequently chose an interpretation that was half way between the two contrasting ones. Malik’s main contribution was the formation of a legal system. This school is most important in Africa, stretching from Morocco in the West to southern Egypt in the East and including most of the countries of the Mediterranean coast. The scholars of this School commonly use human reason to identify correct behavior relying on community consensus about correct behavior (Sunna), accepting opinions from other scholars, and using analogy. This is the most open and flexible school of Sharia thought, relying heavily on human reason.
• Shafi’i School. This school is based on the teachings of Abu Abdullah ash-Shafi’i who lived in the late eighth and early ninth centuries. The scholars of this school try to reach a balance between divine revelation and human reason in making interpretations about the law. Shafi’i was a strict constructionist in allowing only the Quran and Hadith to be used for interpretations and not allowing the opinions of later Muslim scholars. On the other hand, he was liberal in accepting the use of analogies and the importance of human reason to make interpretations applicable to the present. This school is commonly followed in East Africa, Yemen, and Indonesia.

The various schools of Sharia law reflect the social and cultural differences of the regions of the world where they have been accepted. They also reflect the divisions within Islam between fundamentalists who advocate strict interpretation of the law and the more liberal approaches that admit contemporary interpretations.

Conclusions

The Quran and Sharia are at the heart of Muslim belief and practice. The Sharia is a distillation of the truths of the Quran and Muhammad’s life as they may be practiced in everyday life of people. The Sharia defines how a person should worship, dress, eat, and interact with others among many other daily activities. It is the charter of Muslim life. How a person defines the Sharia indicates what kind of Muslim the person is. The ideological struggles in the Muslim world today frequently are over how to interpret the Sharia and how to apply it.

 

 

Boxed Insert One. Friday Noon Prayer and Sheik Muhammad Hanodi
Worship in Islam is centered on prayer and the repetition of the Quran. Although a practicing Muslim should pray five times each day, the Friday noon prayer period is the most important time in the week for gathering at the local mosque to pray. A Muslim friend invited me to attend Friday services with him at his local mosque after consulting with his sheik to make sure it was all right. My wife accompanied me to the mosque, and as we arrived to the building, she was directed to the women’s entrance which led to the second floor balcony. It was a large modern building just off a major thoroughfare but located in a residential neighborhood. Many people came walking to services, but others arrived by car. I entered through the larger men’s entrance, took off my shoes and left them in one of the shoe cubby holes that lined the walls. I followed the others to the area for washing my face, hands, arms, feet, and legs. Once clean, I entered the downstairs prayer area.
Several men were already there reading the Quran. I sat on the carpeted floor some twenty feet away from the podium, and several copies of the Quran were available for anyone who wanted to read while we waited for the service to begin. At 12:00 the hall filled quickly and the Imam came out to start the prayers. Men organized themselves into long prayer lines, standing, kneeling, and bowing to the floor in unison. While standing in a row the worshipers raised their hands to their ears and then crossed them on their chests. Everyone bowed and placed their hands on their knees and then stood again. Then, they kneeled and bowed their heads to the floor and came back to the sitting position. This prayer sequence was repeated twice. After that the men next to me turned to me and said "peace on you and the mercy of Allah". It was explained to me later that although Muslims are wishing peace to each other, some also say that they are greeting the two angels that sit on their shoulders recording their good and bad deeds.
Prayer is in Arabic. Specific prayers celebrating the goodness and greatness of God are repeated, and the exercise of prayer is physical and communal. There is a bonding that occurs as the same words are repeated by all, and each person goes through the cycle of standing, kneeling, and bowing. Bowing one’s head to the floor and full prostration are a display of the submission of the believer to God, and the prayer line emphasizes the unity and equality of believers before God. Prayer is an active process of praising God and celebrating His greatness. The experience of the women in the balcony was similar.
After the prayers the Imam asked a visiting scholar to speak. As is the custom in Islam, anyone may speak during the prayer service, and it is not always the Imam. The speaker was a young man, a teacher from Algeria, and he spoke about the importance of parenting and education. He emphasized the role of parents in training children in the values that would guide their lives. Although he spoke in Arabic, one of the worshipers summarized his words for me later.
After the conclusion of the prayer service, the Imam, Sheik Muhammad Hanoudi, invited me to his house which was next to the mosque. The walls of the living room of the house were lined with chairs and sofas, leaving the center of the room open. The doors leading to the rest of the house were closed. After we sat the Imam called for one of the women to come, and his ten year old daughter came out. He asked for coffee for the two of us which she brought. We talked about Islam, and he explained the importance of the Quran and prayer. He emphasized the oneness of God and the unity of all humanity before God. The Quran, he said, holds all the answers.

 

Boxed Insert Two. Al-Ghazzali (1058-1111), the Renewer of Islam.
Abu Hamid Muhammad al-Ghazzali is perhaps the most important Muslim scholar and interpreter of the Sharia. He was born in Iran and is known as the religious leader who renovated Islam, and today the most important mosque in Baghdad is named after him. He anticipated the rationalist religious philosophies of the twelfth century and combined them with the mystical experience of the Sufis. Al-Ghazzali was educated as a religious scholar in Iran, and at the age of thirty-three he went to teach religious philosophy in an important madrassa in Baghdad. After a few years, he became disillusioned with rationality and began a search for a more satisfying means of knowing life and the truth. At thirty-seven he left his job and returned to his home where he lived a monastic life as a Sufi for the next decade. During that time, he learned to combine mysticism and rationality for a more complete experience of God. He wrote works of religious philosophy, especially the well-known Revival of the Religious Sciences, a treatise on religion and rationality. He affirmed the importance of having a direct relationship with God through mystical channels as well as having the more rational experience of studying Islamic doctrine and thought. He argued that human intellect was not strong enough to understand the full nature of God, but it could be enlightened by the mystical experience of the supernatural. For him, rational philosophy was not the path to God, and it would lead to confusion rather than theological understanding. He is considered one of the great religious scholars of Islam.