The conviction that Islamic law...

The conviction that Islamic law, either in a reformed guise or in its traditional regalia, can and must be implemented in modern Muslim societies is the single unifying feature of the Islamic movement that developed in the post colonialist period, championed by such diverse leaders as Jamal al-Din al-Afghani (d. 1896), Mawlana Mawdidi (d. 1979), Iasan al-Banna and Sayyid Qutb, to mention just a few.

The call for the implementation of the shari'ah has served to rally Muslims ever since into a revivalist movement pejoratively termed "fundamentalist" by the Western press.[^2] Opposed to the revivalists are those who hold that beyond the realm of the rituals of worship, Islamic law is outmoded, an anachronism which has outlived its usefulness, an obstacle to "progress and development".

It is this attitude which was most vehemently implemented in Kemal Ataturk's rule in Turkey (1923-1938), but which has advocates among those who claim to be defenders of Islam, as well. The Islamic opponents of revivalism emphasize the personal, inward dimensions of Islam, and hold that the only proper function of the shari'ah in modern society is the delineation of ritual law.

International law is to be legislated, they hold, in the United Nations; commercial law must be subject to the pressures of international economics; penal codes are to reflect the "enlightened" moral sensibilities of groups like Amnesty International, the framers of declarations of human rights, or even the American Civil Liberties Union. Other areas of law are more controversial.

Family law, for example, was one of branches of law which the colonialists were prepared to concede to traditional Muslim jurisprudence, fiqh, and some Muslim opponents of revivalism would allow family law to continue to be governed by the shari'ah. Regardless of one's stance toward the issues mentioned above, there is no denying that these issues are the most controversial in contemporary Muslim societies.

Emerging from this controversy there is a new function being performed by the shari'ah, for perhaps more than ever before, one's concept of oneself as a Muslim and what one takes it to mean to be a Muslim are intertwined with one's understanding and attitude toward Islamic law. In Islam, the position of man and his responsibilities to God and other men are determined by the law rather than by theology per se.

There are two essential questions debated in this regard, one of scope and one of content.