Theoretical and practical aspects of Islam. Second edition

If there is anything, which is characteristic of and fundamental to Islam and Muslims, it is Shari’ah. Shari’ah or Islamic law as it is today, did not grow over night, but has been the result of historical developments over the centuries following the death of the prophet Muhammad, who during his lifetime supplied additional details to enable some of its provisions become operative. It is reasonable to assume that the Lawgiver never intended the Shari’ah to cover in detail all conceivable exigencies of live. He intended no more and no less than to stake out, as it were, the legal boundaries within which the community ought to develop, leaving the enormous multitude of possible legal situations to be decided from the case to case in accordance with the time and changing social conditions. Thus, the true Shari’ah is far more concise and very much smaller in volume than the legal structure that evolved through the fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence) of various schools of Islamic thought. The emergence of schools of law has affected Shari’ah. Divergence from direct adherence to the Shari’ah was something that none of the classical jurists had intended.