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Sharia has certain laws which are regarded as divinely ordained, concrete and timeless for all relevant situations (for example, the ban against drinking liquor as an intoxicant). It also has certain laws which are extracted based on principles established by Islamic lawyers and judges (Mujtahidun). The sharia as interpreted by Islamic lawmakers is believed by Muslims to be merely a human approximation of the true Sharia, which is understood as the divine and eternal correct path.
In deriving Sharia law, Islamic lawmakers are not, therefore, actually creating divinely correct or incorrect actions beyond question, but rather attempting to interpret divine principles. Hence Sharia in general is considered divine, but a lawyer's or judge's extraction or opinion on a given matter is not, though the process and intention to refer to Allah's law is divinely sanctioned. An Islamic lawyer or judge's attempts to rule according to Sharia, can be described as 'ruling by Sharia', but not beyond question.
For Sunni Muslims, the primary sources of Islamic law are the Qur'an, the Hadith or directions of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, the unanimity of Muhammad's disciples on a certain issue (Ijma), and Qiyas (drawing analogy from the essence of divine principles). Qiyas - various forms of reasoning, including by analogy - are used by the law scholars (Mujtahidun) to deal with situations where the sources provided no concrete rules. The consensus of the community or people, public interest, and others were also accepted as secondary sources where the first four primary sources allow.
In Imami-Shi'i law, the sources of law (usul al-fiqh) are the Qur'an, anecdotes of the Prophet's practices and those of the 12 Imams, and the intellect (aql). The practices called Sharia today, however, also have roots in local customs (Al-urf).
Islamic jurisprudence is called Fiqh and is divided into two parts: the study of the sources and methodology (usul al-fiqh - roots of the law) and the practical rules (furu' al-fiqh - branches of the law).
A lesser source of authority is Qiyas, which is the extension by analogy of existing Sharia law to new situations. Finally, Sharia law can be based on Ijma, or Consensus. Justification for this final approach is drawn from the Hadith where Muhammad states; "My nation cannot agree on an error." The role of Ulema, i.e. scholars, is critical, since they are the ones who study the Islamic law and therefore have authority to represent it. Sharia has largely been codified by the schools (madhhabs) of Islamic Jurisprudence (Fiqh).
The comprehensive nature of Sharia law is due to the belief that the law must provide all that is necessary for a person's spiritual and physical well-being. All possible actions of a Muslim are divided (in principle) into five categories: obligatory, meritorious, permissible, reprehensible, and forbidden. Fundamental to the obligations of every Muslim are the Five Pillars of Islam.
Likewise, most countries of the Middle East and North Africa maintain a dual system of secular courts and religious courts, in which the religious courts mainly regulate marriage and inheritance. Saudi Arabia and Iran maintain religious courts for all aspects of jurisprudence. Sharia is also used in Sudan, Libya and for a time in modern Afghanistan. Some states in northern Nigeria have reintroduced Sharia courts. In practice the new Sharia courts in Nigeria have most often meant the re-introduction of relatively harsh punishments without respecting the much tougher rules of evidence and testimony. The punishments include Amputation of one/both Hand(s) for Theft and Stoning for Adultery. But overall the implementation of the Sharia law is meant to create a just society where the law and people live in harmony. Many Western views consider the punishments described above as harsh, but islamic scholars argue, that if implemented properly, these punishments will serve as a deterrent to crime. Alternatively it has been argued that the Prophet Muhammad would not run courts in such a manner nor introduce overly harsh punishments into societies rich enough to afford prisons and rehabilitation and cohesive enough to prevent accused criminals from being killed by outraged victims and communities.
An unusual secular-state example was the proposal for a Sharia Arbitration court to be established in Ontario, Canada. That province's 1991 arbitration court law allows disputes to be settled in alternative courts to avoid congestion and delay in the court system. The court would handle disputes between Muslim complainants. Its critics feared that the Misogyny inherent in Sharia could possibly influence the Canadian justice system, but its proponents said those who do not wish to go by the court's rulings are not forced to attend it. Moreover, these sharia courts in Canada are only orthodox in a limited way as they respect the priority of Canadian civil law. Anybody not satisfied with a ruling from the sharia court can Appeal to a civil court. As such, this sharia court would be only a very pale version of Sharia.
On September 11, 2005, Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty ended the controversy by no longer allowing a religious basis for arbitration courts. This decision put an end to the existing but very rarely used Orthodox Jewish system and halted the process before the Sharia courts even began. Despite claims to the contrary made by some supporters of Sharia courts, no Christian courts ever provided legal arbitration in Canada.
Like Jewish law and Christian canon law, Islamic law is interpreted differently by different people in different times and places. In the hands of moderates, religious law can be moderate and even liberal. In the hands of post-Enlightenment readers of philosophy, religious law becomes associated mainly with ritual, theology, or history and no longer regulates society or the state.
In the hands of fundamentalists, however, it is legally binding on all people of the faith and even on all people who come under their control. Islamic law to American Muslims in Dearborn, Boston, or Houston is very different than Islamic law to religious Muslims in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the Gaza Strip, western China, Nigeria, Indonesia or Pakistan. All follow Islamic law, yet their view of the law varies as much as individual Muslims vary.
According to the Qur'an, the animal does not have to be slaughtered by a Muslim, but may be slaughtered by a Jew or a Christian (People of the Book) as long as it meets their strict dietary laws (Al-Ma'ida 5: "The food of those who have received the Scripture is lawful for you.") Thus, most Muslims will accept kosher meat as halāl. However, some Muslims regard this as no longer applicable in modern times, insisting that Muslims should not eat kosher meat because of concerns about the techniques and words used in kosher slaughter, and because of the possibility of money spent on it ultimately going to finance Israel. Jurists disagree on the exact circumstances required for meat slaughtered by Christians to be halāl.
In addition, women are generally not allowed to be clergy or religious scholars. Many interpretations of Islamic law hold that women may not have prominent jobs, and thus are forbidden from working in the government. This has been a mainstream view in many Muslim nations in the last century, despite the example of Muhammad's wife Aisha, who both took part in politics and was a major authority on Hadith.
Several non-Shari Muslim countries have had female heads of government or state: Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan, Megawati Sukarnoputri in Indonesia, Tansu Ciller in Turkey and Khaleda Zia inBangladesh. Muslim women also hold important positions in governments or in corporations.
A Muslim may not marry or remain married to an unbeliever of either sex (2:221, 60:10). A Muslim man may marry a woman of the People of the Book (5:5); traditionally, however, Islamic law forbids a Muslim woman from marrying a non-Muslim man. If the man chooses to convert to Islam then marriage would be allowed.
See also Ma malakat aymanukum.
Turkey, a predominantly Muslim country, has laws against these dress codes in schools and work places. After the declaration of the Republic in 1923, as part of revolutions brought by Ataturk, a modern dress code was encouraged. It is against the law to wear a head scarf while attending public school in Turkey, as well as France, where the recently enacted rule caused huge public controversy.
Some view Islamic women as being oppressed by the men in their communities because of the required dress codes. However, in more moderate nations, where these dress codes are not obligatory, there are still many Muslim women who practice it, where most of them choose to follow it because they believe it is the will of Allah. One of the garments some women wear is the hijāb (of which the headscarf is one component). The word hijab is derived from the Arabic word hajaba which means 'to hide from sight or view', 'to conceal'. Hijāb means to cover the head as well as the body.
The medieval jurist ash-Shafi'i, founder of one of the main schools of Fiqh, commented on this verse that "hitting is permitted, but not hitting is preferable."
The Arabic verse uses idribu¯hunna (from the root daraba ضرب), whose commonest meaning in Arabic has been rendered as "beat", "hit", "scourge", or "strike". Besides this verse, other meanings for daraba used in the Qur'an (though not with a human direct object) include 'to travel', 'to make a simile', 'to cover', 'to separate', and 'to go abroad', among others. For this reason - particularly in recent years (e.g. Ahmed Ali, Edip Yuksel) - some consider "hit" to be a misinterpretation, and believe it should be translated as "admonish them, and leave them alone in the sleeping-places and separate from them." Certain modern translations of the Qur'an in the English language accept the commoner translation of "beat" but tone down the wording with bracketed additions. Whatever idribu¯hunna is meant to convey in the Qur'an -- and multiple, complementary meanings are quite common in Islam's holy book -- the verb is directed, not at a single husband, but to the community as a whole.
Several Hadith urge strongly against beating one's wife, such as: "How does anyone of you beat his wife as he beats the stallion camel and then embrace (sleep with) her? (Al-Bukhari, English Translation, vol. 8, Hadith 68, pp. 42-43), "I went to the Apostle of Allah (peace be upon him) and asked him: What do you say (command) about our wives? He replied: Give them food what you have for yourself, and clothe them by which you clothe yourself, and do not beat them, and do not revile them. (Sunan Abu-Dawud, Book 11, Marriage (Kitab Al-Nikah), Number 2139)". However, some suggest that these Hadith were later abrogated, noting that in the Farewell Pilgrimage, he said:
Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, head of the European Council for Fatwa and Research, says that:
"Honor killings" are, in the Western world, often erroneously identified as part of Islamic teaching, though they are in fact a cultural practice which is neither exclusive to, nor universal within, the Islamic world. Such killings take place within the Muslim communities around the Mediterranean as well as in the Punjab, India, non-Muslim parts of West Africa, and in Central America; while in Indonesia, the world's largest Islamic country, the status of the practice is unknown.
The stated reason for honor killings is the belief that the woman had caused the clan or family to lose honor by her alleged sexual activity and therefore deserved to be killed. Islamic teaching holds that life is given by Allah and should not be taken lightly, but it allows severe punishment, up to and including Capital punishment, for certain kinds of crime; these include, in strict interpretations, all extramarital sexual relations (Zina) by both men and women - though only married adulterers may be punished with death. The interpretation and application of these laws relating to marriage and chastity has varied in different eras and places. See Islamic view of marriage
Female circumcision is not part of mainstream Islam on an international scale, but is performed by Muslims and non-Muslims alike across East Africa and the Nile Valley, as well as parts of the Arabian peninsula and Southeast Asia. In both areas, the custom predates Islam. Many African Muslims believe that female circumcision is required by Islam, but a large number of Muslims believe this practice has no basis in Islam. Nevertheless it is justified on religious grounds both by Muslims and Christians who practice it, mostly in parts of Africa.
The Egyptian-born president of the 'European Council on Fatwa and Research', Yusuf al-Qaradawi, emphasises that this is not a religious obligation, but expresses his personal preference for removal of the prepuce of the clitoris, called clitoridotomy ( Fatwa on islamonline.net.)
The use of the term 'circumcision' is highly confusing, as the practice ranges from a mild superficial act that does not reduce any physiological function (the 'real' circumcision) to various forms of partial or even complete removal of female genital organs. In certain countries, this is accompanied by reducing the genital opening. These forms are, because of their brutal nature, also referred to as female genital mutilation (FGM). This term is most often used in official publications of the United Nations and World Health Organization.
Some people claim that Muslims who convert to Christianity can be at risk. See any of the works of Ibn Warraq, who claims to be an outspoken former Muslim. (However, it is important to note that none of Ibn Warraq's personal claims can be checked or confirmed, since he uses a pseudonym.) A well-known example of a Muslim "apostate" undergoing persecution is that of Salman Rushdie, whose novel The Satanic Verses prompted Khomeini to issue a Fatwa (religious opinion) for his execution. Even though some suspect that Khomeini issued this fatwa more because of the lampooning of Khomeini himself it could be argued that Khomeini's motivation for issuing the fatwa is irrelevant as Rushdie's apostasy was the formal ground for the imposition of the death sentence.
On the other hand, the denial of freedom of speech by Muslims is not only restricted to those Muslims supporting the most vigorous interpretations. In Egypt, public authorities went so far as to try to annul, without his consent, the marriage of Prof. Nasr Abu Zayd when he got in conflict with an orthodox islamic cleric from the Al-Azhar University in Cairo. The cleric had condemned Abu Zayd's reading of the Qur'an as being against the orthodox interpretation and labelled him an apostate (seen as a non-believer and consequently not permitted to marry or stay married to a Muslim woman). Abu Zayd fled to the Netherlands, where he is now a professor at the university of Leiden. Nevertheless, the case illustrates how far more common or average interpretations can go.