ভূমিকা

Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books Contemporary Topics of Islamic Thought Islamic Law And Muslim Life Islamic law or shari'ah performs various functions, and these functions have altered over the centuries. Even within a given time period, the shari'ah plays different roles for different Muslim communities.

Throughout the middle ages, the shari'ah functioned not only to prescribe ritual orthopraxy, but it also functioned as penal code, commercial law, and as a kind of international law among Muslim countries. The jurisdiction of the civil law of Islam was often challenged by another law: the law of the courts of the caliphs, amirs and sultans.

In addition to the qadis, who administered and judged according to the shari'ah, the caliphs also had lawyers concerned with non­religious law by which many of the punishments were handled and taxes levied.[^1] Nevertheless, Islamic law held precedence in these areas. If the ruler imposed some law or issued a decree which was blatantly in violation of the shari'ah he would have to face the opposition of the ulama, and the support they commanded.

Another overlapping of jurisdiction could be found in common law and Islamic law. Islamic law often explicitly condones 'urf or custom, and one of the questions which the Muslim legal scholars have debated is whether the references to custom should be taken to refer specifically to the custom at the time of the Prophets, or more generally to whatever customs are current in society.

With the eclipse of the caliphates and the intrusion of colonial powers into Muslim lands and the subsequent emergence of Muslim nation states, the shari'ah came to be increasingly restricted. Pious Muslims reacted in several ways. Some, like the Egyptian theologian Muhammad 'Abduh (d.1905), who are called modernists, admitted that the way in which Islamic law had come to be interpreted needed revision in order to accommodate the demands of modern life.

Others sought the implementation of Islamic law as traditionally understood but within the context of the modern nation state. Both the conservatives and reformists were in agreement, however, that the displacement of Islamic law by the colonialists and secularists had to be reversed.