Sharia Totally Explained

Everything about Shari Ah totally explained

ť This article is about Islamic religious law. For the fictional character in One Thousand and One Nights see Shahryar.

Sharia (Arabic: ) is the body of Islamic religious law. The term means "way" or "path to the water source"; it's the legal framework within which the public and private aspects of life are regulated for those living in a legal system based on Islamic principles of jurisprudence and for Muslims living outside the domain. Sharia deals with many aspects of day-to-day life, including politics, economics, banking, business, contracts, family, sexuality, hygiene, and social issues.
   There is no strictly static set of laws of sharia. Sharia is more of a system of how law ought to serve humanity, a consensus of the unified spirit, based on the Qur'an (the religious text of Islam), hadith (sayings and doings of Muhammad and his companions), Ijma (consensus), Qiyas (reasoning by analogy) and centuries of debate, interpretation and precedent.
   Before the 19th century, legal theory was considered the domain of the traditional legal schools of thought. Most Sunni Muslims follow Hanafi, Hanbali, Maliki or Shafii, while most Shia Muslims follow the jaafari school of thought and are considered Twelvers.
   Islamic law is now the most widely used religious law, and one of the three most common legal systems of the world alongside common law and civil law. During the Islamic Golden Age, classical Islamic law had a fairly significant influence on the development of common law,

In the context of Islam

Mainstream Islam distinguishes between fiqh (deep understanding, discernment), which refers to the inferences drawn by scholars, and sharia, which refers to the principles that lie behind the fiqh. Scholars hope that fiqh (jurisprudence) and sharia (law) are in harmony in any given case, but they can't be sure.
   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 derived from principles established by Islamic lawyers and judges (mujtahidun).
   The primary sources of Islamic law are the Qur'an and Sunnah.
   To this, traditional Sunni Muslims add the consensus (ijma) of Muhammad's companions (sahaba) and Islamic jurists (ulema) on certain issues, and drawing analogy from the essence of divine principles and preceding rulings (qiyas). In situations where no concrete rules exist under the sources, law scholars use qiyas — various forms of reasoning, including by analogy. The consensus of the community or people, public interest, and others are also accepted as secondary sources where the first four primary sources allow.
Shi'a Muslims reject this approach. They strongly reject analogy (qiyas) as an easy way to innovations (bid'ah), and also reject consensus (ijma) as having any particular value in its own. During the period that the Sunni scholars developed those two tools, the Shi'a Imams were alive, and Shi'a view them as an extension of the Sunnah, so they view themselves as only deriving their laws (fiqh) from the Qur'an and Sunnah. A re-occurring theme in Shi'a jurisprudence is logic (mantiq), something Shi'a believe they mention, employ and value to a higher degree than Sunnis do. They don't view logic as a third source for laws, rather a way to see if the derived work is compatible with the Qur'an and Sunnah.
   In Imami-Shi'i law, the sources of law (usul al-fiqh) are the Qur'an, anecdotes of Muhammad'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:

Usul al-fiqh (أصول الفقه) — roots of the law: the study of the sources and methodology
Furu' al-fiqh (فروع الفقه) — branches of the law: the practical rules

The comprehensive nature of Sharia law is due to the belief that the law must provide all that's 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

forbidden

Classical Islamic law

The formative period of Islamic jurisprudence stretches back to the time of the early Muslim communities. In this period, jurists were more concerned with pragmatic issues of authority and teaching than with theory. Progress in theory happened with the coming of the early Muslim jurist Muhammad ibn Idris ash-Shafi`i (767-820), who laid down the basic principles of Islamic jurisprudence in his book ar-Risālah. The book details the four roots of law (Qur'an, Sunnah, ijma, and qiyas) while specifying that the primary Islamic texts (the Qur'an and the hadith) be understood according to objective rules of interpretation derived from careful study of the Arabic language.
   A number of important legal concepts and institutions were developed by Islamic jurists during the classical period of Islam, known as the Islamic Golden Age, dated from the 7th to 13th centuries. therefore, sharia, Islamic law, is founded on the Qur'an and the Sunnah. However, sharia wasn't fully developed at the time of Muhammad's death, but rather it evolved around the Muslim community or Ummah through which it would serve.
   When sharia began its formation in the deserts of Arabia about 1,400 years ago, the time Islam was born, a sense of community didn't exist. Life in the desert was nomadic and tribal, thus the only factor that tied people together into various tribes was through common ancestry. – no matter the location or the culture.
   However, people don't change overnight nor do their habits of everyday life – sharia was indeed guided through its development by lifestyles of the tribes in which was initially absorbed into Islam. Thus, through the understandings of the tribe, Islamic law would be a law of the community – for the community by the community – even if initially proposed by an individual “for they couldn't form part of the tribal law unless and until they were generally accepted as such.” without contradiction, tribal life bought about a sense of participation. Such participation is further reinforced by Muhammad who stated, “My community will never agree in error” and thus, later recorded as a hadith.
   After the death of Muhammad sharia continued to undergo fundamental changes, beginning with the reigns of caliphs Abu Bakr (632-34) and Umar (634-44) in which many decision making matters were brought to the attention of the Prophet's closest comrades for consultation. In AD 662, during the reign of Mu'awiya b. Abu Sufyan, life ceased to be nomadic and undertook an urban transformation which in turn created matters not originally covered by Islamic law. According to Justice Gamal Moursi Badr, Islamic law is like common law in that it "is not a written law" and the "provisions of Islamic law are to be sought first and foremost in the teachings of the authoritative jurists" (Ulema), hence Islamic law may "be called a lawyer's law if common law is a judge's law." For example, every Waqf was required to have a waqif (founder), mutawillis (trustee), qadi (judge) and beneficiaries. Under both a Waqf and a trust, "property is reserved, and its usufruct appropriated, for the benefit of specific individuals, or for a general charitable purpose; the corpus becomes inalienable; estates for life in favor of successive beneficiaries can be created" and "without regard to the law of inheritance or the rights of the heirs; and continuity is secured by the successive appointment of trustees or mutawillis." The trust law developed in England at the time of the Crusades, during the 12th and 13th centuries, was introduced by Crusaders who may have been influenced by the Waqf institutions they came across in the Middle East. The introduction of the trust, or "use" was primarily motivated by the need to avoid medieval inheritance taxes. By transferring legal title to a third party, there was no need to pay feudal dues on the death of the father. In those times, it was common for an underage child to lose many of his rights to his feudal overlord if he succeeded before he came of age.
   The precursor to the English jury trial was the Lafif trial in classical Maliki jurisprudence, which was developed between the 8th and 11th centuries in North Africa and Islamic Sicily, and shares a number of similarities with the later jury trials in English common law. Like the English jury, the Islamic Lafif was a body of twelve members drawn from the neighbourhood and sworn to tell the truth, who were bound to give a unanimous verdict, about matters "which they'd personally seen or heard, binding on the judge, to settle the truth concerning facts in a case, between ordinary people, and obtained as of right by the plaintiff." The only characteristic of the English jury which the Islamic Lafif lacked was the "judicial writ directing the jury to be summoned and directing the bailiff to hear its recognition." According to Professor John Makdisi, "no other institution in any legal institution studied to date shares all of these characteristics with the English jury." It is thus likely that the concept of the Lafif may have been introduced to England by the Normans and then evolved into the modern English jury.
   The precursor to the English assize of novel disseisin was the Islamic Istihqaq, an action "for the recovery of usurped land", in contrast to the previous Roman law which "emphasized possession in resolving such disputes." The "assize of novel disseisin broke with this tradition and emphasized ownership, as is found in the Islamic law of Istihqaq." Islamic law also introduced the notion of allowing an accused suspect or defendant to have an agent or lawyer, known as a wakil, handle his/her defense. This was in contrast to early English common law, which "used lawyers to prosecute but the accused were left to handle their defense themselves." The English Parliament didn't allow those accused of treason the right to retain lawyers until 1695, and for those accused of other felonies until 1836.
   Islamic jurists formulated early contract laws which introduced the application of formal rationality, legal rationality, legal logic (see Logic in Islamic philosophy) and legal reasoning in the use of contracts. Islamic jurists also introduced the concepts of recession (Iqalah), frustration of purpose (istihalah al-tanfidh or "impossibility of performance"), Act of God (Afat Samawiyah or "Misfortune from Heaven") and force majeure in the law of contracts. However, recission, frustration and other core concepts in the law of contract are relatively recent introductions into the Law of England, dating back to the Victorian period. Early case law indicates that it was impossible to rescind a contract for frustration even where performance became impossible.
   Other possible influences of Islamic law on English common law include the concepts of a passive judge, impartial judge, res judicata, the judge as a blank slate, individual self-definition, justice rather than morality, the law above the state, individualism, freedom of contract, privilege against self-incrimination, fairness over truth, individual autonomy, untrained and transitory decision making, overlap in testimonial and adjudicative tasks, appeal, dissent, day in court, prosecution for perjury, oral testimony, and the judge as a moderator, supervisor, announcer and enforcer rather than an adjudicator.

Comparison with law in the United States

Similarities between Islamic law and the common law of the United States have also been noted, particularly in regards to Constitutional law. According to Sameer S. Vohra, the United States Constitution is similar to the Qur’an in that the Constitution is "the supreme law of the land and the basis from which the laws of the legislature originate." Vohra further notes that the legislature is similar to the Sunnah in that the "legislature takes the framework of the Constitution and makes directives that involve the specific day-to-day situations of its citizens."
The earliest known lawsuits may also date back to Islamic law. There was a hadith tradition which reported that the Caliph Uthman Ibn Affan (580-656) attempted to sue a Jewish subject for recovery of a suit of armour, but his case was unsuccessful due to a lack of competent witnesses. The concept of a lawsuit was also described in the Ethics of the Physician by Ishaq bin Ali al-Rahwi (854–931) of al-Raha, Syria, as part of an early medical peer review process, where the notes of a practicing Islamic physician were reviewed by peers and he/she could be sued by a maltreated patient if the reviews were negative.
The earliest known prohibition of illegal drugs occurred under Islamic law, which prohibited the use of Hashish, a preparation of cannabis, as a recreational drug. Classical jurists in medieval Islamic jurisprudence, however, accepted the use of the Hashish drug for medicinal and therapeutic purposes, and agreed that its "medical use, even if it leads to mental derangement, remains exempt" from punishment. In the 14th century, the Islamic jurist Az-Zarkashi spoke of "the permissibility of its use for medical purposes if it's established that it's beneficial." According to Mary Lynn Mathre, with "this legal distinction between the intoxicant and the medical uses of cannabis, medieval Muslim theologians were far ahead of present-day American law."

Other similarities

Precursors to common law concepts in property law were found in classical Islamic property law, including the concepts of leasehold (including duty to take and keep in possession and holdover tenancy), joint ownership (including partition, pledge, bailment, lost property, license and trespass), acquisition (including intestate succession), duress (Ikrah), transfer by sale (including contract formation, meeting of the minds, declaration, duress and risk of loss), transfer by gift, rights and restrictions on transfers (including restraint on alienation, appurtenance, fixture, preemption, mortgage and water rights), will (including entitlement to shares, revocation, ademption, lapse, abatement and ambiguity), attacks on ownership (including concepts of theft, robbery, usurpation, nuisance, and defense of necessity), and causation (including remote consequences, intervening human cause, concurrent cause and uncertain cause). Many of these concepts were summarized in Islamic juristic texts, including the Hidayah by the Hanafi jurist al-Marghilani, the Minhaj al-Talibin by the Shafi`i jurist Yahya ibn Sharaf al-Nawawi, the Mukhtasar by the Maliki jurist Khalil ibn Ishaq al-Jundi, the Fatawa-e-Alamgiri by Hanafi jurists, and the Kasani.
While some see the Islamic concept of Istihsan as being equivalent to the concept of equity in English law, others see it as being equivalent to the "reasoned distinction of precedent" in American law, in which case Istihsan may be referred to as the "reasoned distinction of qiyas (reasoning by analogy)". John Makdisi writes:
Other precursors to common law concepts are found in classical Islamic law and jurisprudence, including advocacy, ratio decidendi (illah), arbitrary decision-making, legal opinion, discretion, public policy (Istislah and Maslaha), The "European commenda" limited partnerships (Islamic Qirad) used in civil law as well as the civil law conception of res judicata may also have origins in Islamic law. The concept of an agency was also an "institution unknown to Roman law", where it wasn't possible for an individual to "conclude a binding contract on behalf of another as his agent." The concept of an agency was introduced by Islamic jurists, and thus the civil law conception of agency may also have origins in Islamic law. The Siete Partidas of Alfonso X, which was regarded as a "monument of legal science" in the civil law tradition, was also influenced by the Islamic legal treatise Villiyet written in Islamic Spain.

Influence on international law

The first treatise on international law (Siyar in Arabic) was the Introduction to the Law of Nations written at the end of the 8th century by Mohammed bin Hassan al-Shaybani They dealt with both public international law as well as private international law.
These early Islamic legal treatises covered the application of Islamic ethics, Islamic economic jurisprudence and Islamic military jurisprudence to international law, and were concerned with a number of modern international law topics, including the law of treaties; the treatment of diplomats, hostages, refugees and prisoners of war; the right of asylum; conduct on the battlefield; protection of women, children and non-combatant civilians; contracts across the lines of battle; the use of poisonous weapons; and devastation of enemy territory.}}
The Islamic legal principles of international law were largely based on Qur'an and the Sunnah of Muhammad, who gave various injunctions to his forces and adopted practices toward the conduct of war. The most important of these were summarized by Muhammad's successor and close companion, Abu Bakr, in the form of ten rules for the Muslim army:
Madrasahs were the first law schools, and it's likely that the "law schools known as Inns of Court in England" may have been derived from the Madrasahs which taught Islamic law and jurisprudence.

Human rights

human rights, early Islamic jurists introduced a number of advanced legal concepts before the 12th century which anticipated similar modern concepts in the field. These included the notions of the charitable trust and the trusteeship of property; the notion of brotherhood and social solidarity; the notions of human dignity and the dignity of labour; the notion of an ideal law; the condemnation of antisocial behavior; the presumption of innocence; the notion of "bidding unto good" (assistance to those in distress); and the notions of sharing, caring, universalism, fair industrial relations, fair contract, commercial integrity, freedom from usury, women's rights, privacy, abuse of rights, juristic personality, individual freedom, equality before the law, legal representation, non-retroactivity, supremacy of the law, judicial independence, judicial impartiality, limited sovereignity, tolerance, and democratic participation. Many of these concepts were adopted in medieval Europe through contacts with Islamic Spain and the Emirate of Sicily, and through the Crusades and the Latin translations of the 12th century.
   The concept of inalienable rights was found in early Islamic law and jurisprudence, which denied a ruler "the right to take away from his subjects certain rights which inhere in his or her person as a human being." Islamic rulers couldn't take away certain rights from their subjects on the basis that "they become rights by reason of the fact that they're given to a subject by a law and from a source which no ruler can question or alter." Islamic jurists also anticipated the concept of the rule of law, the equal subjection of all classes to the ordinary law of the land, where no person is above the law and where officials and private citizens are under a duty to obey the same law. A Qadi (Islamic judge) was also not allowed to discriminate on the grounds of religion, race, colour, kinship or prejudice. There were also a number of cases where Caliphs had to appear before judges as they prepared to take their verdict. There is evidence that John Locke's formulation of inalienable rights and conditional rulership, which were present in Islamic law centuries earlier, may have also been influenced by Islamic law, through his attendance of lectures given by Edward Pococke, a professor of Islamic studies.
   Early Islamic law recognized two sets of human rights. In addition to the category of civil rights and political rights (covered in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights), Islamic law also recognized an additional category: social, economic and cultural rights. This latter category wasn't recognized in the Western legal tradition until the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in 1966. The right of privacy, which wasn't recognized in Western legal traditions until modern times, was recogonized in Islamic law since the beginning of Islam. For example, "French married women, unlike their Muslim sisters, suffered from restrictions on their legal capacity which were removed only in 1965."
   In the North Carolina Law Review journal, Professor John Makdisi of the University of North Carolina School of Law writes in "The Islamic Origins of the Common Law" article:
Democratic participationCaliphate, the head of state, the Caliph, had a position based on the notion of a successor to Muhammad's political authority, who, according to Sunnis, were ideally elected by the people or their representatives. After the Rashidun Caliphs, later Caliphates during the Islamic Golden Age had a lesser degree of democratic participation, but since "no one was superior to anyone else except on the basis of piety and virtue" in Islam, and following the example of Muhammad, later Islamic rulers often held public consultations with the people in their affairs.
Islam has prescribed five ways to free slaves, has severely chastised those who enslave free persons and has thus regulated the slave trade. The source of slaves was restricted to war in preference to killing whole tribes en masse, as was the tradition at the time.

Qanun

“After the fall of the Abbasids in 1258,” a practice known to the Turks and Mongols transformed itself into Qanun, which gave power to caliphs, governors, and sultans alike to “make their own regulations for activities not addressed by the sharia.”

Reformers believe that new Islamic legal theories can produce modernized Islamic law and lead to acceptable opinions in areas such as women's rights.

Contemporary practice

There is tremendous variety in the interpretation and implementation of Islamic Law in Muslim societies today. Liberal movements within Islam have questioned the relevance and applicability of sharia from a variety of perspectives; Islamic feminism brings multiple points of view to the discussion. Several of the countries with the largest Muslim populations, including Indonesia, Bangladesh and Pakistan, have largely secular constitutions and laws, with only a few Islamic provisions in family law. Turkey has a constitution that's officially strongly secular. India and the Philippines are the only countries in the world which have separate Muslim civil laws, framed by the Muslim Personal Law board in India, and wholly based on Sharia and the Code of Muslim Personal Laws in the Philippines. However, the criminal laws are uniform. Some controversial sharia laws favour Muslim men, including polygamy and rejection of alimony. 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, and religious police assert social compliance. Laws derived from sharia are also applied in Afghanistan, Libya and Sudan. 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 harsh punishments without respecting the much tougher rules of evidence and testimony. The punishments include amputation of one/both hands for theft and stoning for adultery and apostasy.
Many, including the European Court of Human Rights, consider the punishments prescribed by Sharia as being barbaric and cruel. Islamic scholars argue that, if implemented properly, the punishments serve as a deterrent to crime. In international media, practices by countries applying Islamic law have fallen under considerable criticism at times. This is particularly the case when the sentence carried out is seen to greatly tilt away from established standards of international human rights. This is true for the application of the death penalty for the crimes of adultery and homosexuality, amputations for the crime of theft, and flogging for fornication or public intoxication. (External Link

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   Though Islamic law is interpreted differently across times, places and scholars, some Muslim fundamentalists following the literal and traditional interpretations believe it should legally be binding on all people of the Muslim faith and even on all people who come under their control.
A bill proposed by lawmakers in the Indonesian province of Aceh would impose Sharia law on all non-Muslims, the armed forces and law enforcement officers, a local police official has announced. The news comes two months after the Deutsche Presse-Agentur warned of "Taliban-style Islamic police terrorizing Indonesia's Aceh".
   The interpretation of Islamic jurisprudence varies in different modern nations. In the Anglosphere and in Islamic countries with a history of British rule, for example, Islamic finance has been relatively successful due to the common-law nature of Islamic jurisprudence being compatible with English common law, which was itself significantly influenced by Islamic law. On the other hand, Islamic finance has been relatively unsuccessful in certain regimes such as Iran, Pakistan and Sudan which have diverged from the common-law nature of Islamic jurisprudence and instead interpret "a common-law variant as if it were a civil law system." According to the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, "In some of the ways it has been codified and practised across the world, it has been appalling and applied to women in places like Saudi Arabia, it's grim."
   A prominent Islamic jurist explains the common-law nature of Islamic jurisprudence:
state mechanism", while modern Islamic law is "controlled by the state because the state often controls the legal scholars." According to Sameer S. Vohra, "This control mechanism results in a lack of the sort of pluralism that once made the Islamic legal system as innovative and fluid as its United States counterpart."

Contemporary issues

Democracy and human rights

Some democrats and several official institutions in democratic countries (as the European Court for Human Rights) argue that Sharia is incompatible with a democratic state. These incompatibilities have been clarified in several legal disputes. In 1998 the Turkish Constitutional Court banned and dissolved Turkey's Refah Party on the grounds that the "rules of sharia", which Refah sought to introduce, "were incompatible with the democratic regime," stating that "Democracy is the antithesis of sharia." On appeal by Refah the European Court of Human Rights determined that "sharia is incompatible with the fundamental principles of democracy" Refah's sharia based notion of a "plurality of legal systems, grounded on religion" was ruled to contravene the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. It was determined that it would "do away with the State's role as the guarantor of individual rights and freedoms" and "infringe the principle of non-discrimination between individuals as regards their enjoyment of public freedoms, which is one of the fundamental principles of democracy". It was further ruled that, according to Christian Moe:
Christian Pippan argues, that this contradicts the political reality in most Islamic states. "While constitutional arrangements to ensure that political authority is exercised within the boundaries of Sharia vary greatly among those nations", most existing models of political Islam have so far grossly failed to accept any meaningful political competition of the kind that Khan himself has identified as essential for even a limited conception of democracy. Khan, writes Pippan, dismisses verdicts as from the European Court of Human Rights or the Turkish Constitutional Court "as an expression of purely national or regional preferences."
Several major, predominantly Muslim countries criticized the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) for its perceived failure to take into account the cultural and religious context of non-Western countries. Iran claimed that the UDHR was a "a secular understanding of the Judeo-Christian tradition", which couldn't be implemented by Muslims without trespassing the Islamic law. Therefore the Organization of the Islamic Conference, a group representing all Muslim majority nations, adopted the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam, which diverges from the UDHR substantially, affirming Sharia as the sole source of human rights. This Declaration was severely criticized by the International Commission of Jurists for allegedly gravely threatening the inter-cultural consensus, introducing intolerable discrimination against non-Muslims and women, restricting fundamental rights and freedoms, and attacking the integrity and dignity of the human being.

Freedom of speech

Qadi ‘Iyad ibn Musa al-Yahsubi argues that Sharia doesn't allow freedom of speech on such matters as criticism of Muhammad and that such criticism is considered blasphemy against Muhammad. He writes:
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 labeled 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's now a professor at the University of Leiden.

Gay rights

Homosexual activity is illicit under the sharia, however the prescribed penalties differ from one school of jurisprudence to another. For example these countries may allow the death penalty for homosexual activity: Iran, UAE, Sudan, Nigeria, Mauritania, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Somalia. Sharia doesn't recognize 'fundamental human rights based on sexual-orientation'.Sharia doesn't really have a concept of "human rights" comparable to the post-Enlightenment Western idea - only of man's duties to society and to God. The current focus of so- called human rights organizations is on decriminalization, as well as adding anti-discrimination laws, incitement to hatred laws (Hate crime), and eventually same-sex unions or same-sex marriage. In particular human rights organizations are very concerned about the persecution of gays in Iran and have helped some gay Iranians gain legal asylum in Western countries.

Women

In terms of religious obligations, such as certain elements of prayer, payment of zakat, observance of the Ramadan fast .and pilgrimage, women are treated no differently from men. There are, however, some exceptions made in the case of prayers and fasting. They are also forbidden to perform salat(prayer) during menstruation.
   Islam has no clergy, but women don't traditionally become Imams or lead prayer. In practice, it's much more common for men to be scholars than women. Early Muslim scholars such as Abu-Hanifa and Al-Tabary held that there's nothing wrong with women holding a post as responsible as that of judge. 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. Islam doesn't prohibit women from working, as it says "Treat your women well and be kind to them for they're your partners and committed helpers." Married women may seek employment although it's often thought in patriarchal societies that the woman's role as a wife and mother should have first priority.
   Islam unequivocally allows both single and married women to own property in their own right. Islam grants to women the right to inherit property, in contrast with some cultures where women themselves are considered chattels that can be inherited. (See widow inheritance.) However, a woman's inheritance is different from a man's, both in quantity and attached obligations. For instance, a daughter's inheritance is half that of her brothers, while a woman's share of inheritance is completely hers and no one, including her father or husband, can make any claim on it. In contrast, a son is required to use his inheritance to support his sister, as needed.
   According to Islamic law, a post-pubescent female can't be forced to marry anyone without their consent. Besides all other provisions for her protection at the time of marriage, it was specifically decreed that a woman has the full right to her mahr, a marriage gift, which is presented to her by her husband and is included in the nuptial contract. Some muslims believe that a woman can divorce her husband without resorting to the courts if the nuptial contract allows that. A Muslim may not marry or remain married to an unbeliever of either sex .
   Islamic jurists have traditionally held that Muslim women may only enter into marriage with Muslim men, On the other hand, the Qur'an explicitly allows Muslim men to marry any woman of the People of the Book, a term which includes Jews, Sabians, and Christians. However, fiqh law has held that it's mukrah (reprehensible) for a Muslim man to marry a non-Muslim woman in a non-Muslim country.

Topics of Islamic law

Shari'ah may be divided into five main branches:

'ibadah (ritual worship)

mu'amalat (transactions and contracts)

adaab (morals and manners)

i'tiqadat (beliefs)

'uqubat (punishments) (External Link

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The acts of worship, or al-ibadat includes:

Ritual Purification (wudu)
Prayers (salah)
Fasts (sawm and Ramadan)
Charities (zakat)
Pilgrimage to Mecca (hajj)

Human interaction, or al-mu'amalat includes:

Financial transactions
Endowments
Laws of inheritance
Marriage, divorce, and child care
Foods and drinks (including ritual slaughtering and hunting)
Penal punishments
Warfare and peace
Judicial matters (including witnesses and forms of evidence) See mu`amalat laws according to five major schools of jurisprudence and The Majallah.

Dietary

Islamic law doesn't present a comprehensive list of pure foods and drinks. However, it sanctions:

Prohibition of swine, blood, meat of dead animals and animals slaughtered in the name of someone other than Allah.

Prohibition of slaughtering an animal in any other way except in the prescribed manner of tazkiyah (cleansing) by taking Allah’s name which involves cutting the throat of the animal and draining the blood. Causing the animal needless pain, slaughtering with a blunt blade or physically ripping out the esophagus is strictly forbidden. Modern contemporary 'painless' methods of slaughter like the captive bolt stunning are also prohibited.

Prohibition of intoxicants The prohibition of dead meat isn't applicable to fish and locusts. Also hadith literature prohibits beasts having sharp canine teeth, birds having claws and tentacles in their feet, Jallalah (animals whose meat carries a stink in it because they feed on filth), tamed donkeys, and any piece cut from a living animal.

A woman who wishes to be divorced usually needs the consent of her husband. However, most schools allow her to obtain a divorce without her husband's consent if she can show the judge that her husband is impotent. If the husband consents she doesn't have to pay back the dower.

Men have the right of unilateral divorce. A divorce is effective when the man tells his wife that he's divorcing her. At this point the husband must pay the wife the "delayed" component of the dower.

A divorced woman of reproductive age must wait four months and ten days before marrying again to ensure that she isn't pregnant. Her ex-husband should support her financially during this period.

If a man divorces his wife three times, he can no longer marry her again unless she marries another man, and if they got divorced (only in a way that this divorce isn't intended for the woman to re-marry her first husband) the woman could re-marry her first husband.

These are guidelines; Islamic law on divorce is different depending on the school of thought. In accordance with hadith, stoning to death is the penalty for married men and women who commit adultery. In addition, there are several conditions related to the person who commits it that must be met. One of the difficult ones is that the punishment can't be enforced unless there's a confession of the person, or four male eyewitnesses who each saw the act being committed. All of these must be met under the scrutiny of judicial authority For unmarried men and women, the punishment prescribed in the Qur'an and hadith is 100 lashes.
   Similarly, under Sharia a woman who is accused of adultery can't be punished unless there are four male eyewitnesses to prove she did commit adultery. The "four witness" standard comes from the Qur'an itself, a revelation Muhammad announced in response to accusations of adultery leveled at his wife, Aisha: "Why did they not produce four witnesses? Since they produce not witnesses, they verily are liars in the sight of Allah."
The word in the Quran used for "beat" is idreb. It is a conjugate of the word daraba which primarily means "to beat, strike, to hit". The Arabic word idreb is used in two primary ways. 1) to strike up a poem, and 2) to physically "beat", or "strike" someone.
   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 ambiguities are common in Islam's holy book -- the verb is directed, not at a single husband, but to the community as a whole.
   The word "idrib" is used 12 times in the Quran. Eight times it's used in the physical action of striking, and three times it's used in the context of speaking or applying a proverb. Clearly then, the most frequent use of the word is in physically striking. Here is a Quranic verse in which "idreb" is used:
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've for yourself, and clothe them by which you clothe yourself, and don't beat them, and don't revile them. (Sunan Abu-Dawud, Book 11, Marriage (Kitab Al-Nikah), Number 2139)". Others hadiths do indicate that husbands have a right to discipline their wives in a civilized manner to a certain extent:

Fear Allah concerning women! Verily you've taken them on the security of Allah, and intercourse with them has been made lawful unto you by words of Allah. You too have right over them, and that they shouldn't allow anyone to sit on your bed whom you don't like. But if they do that, you can chastise them but not severely. Their rights upon you're that you should provide them with food and clothing in a fitting manner. (Narrated in Sahih Muslim, on the authority of Jabir.)

According to Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, head of the European Council for Fatwa and Research:

If the husband senses that feelings of disobedience and rebelliousness are rising against him in his wife, he should try his best to rectify her attitude by kind words, gentle persuasion and reasoning with her. If this isn't helpful, he should sleep apart from her, trying to awaken her agreeable feminine nature so that serenity may be restored, and she may respond to him in a harmonious fashion. If this approach fails, it's permissible for him to smack her lightly with his hands, avoiding her face and other sensitive parts. In no case should he resort to using a stick or any other instrument that might cause pain and injury.

Punishments are authorized by other passages in the Quran and hadiths for certain crimes (for example, extramarital sex, adultery), and are employed by some as rationale for extra-legal punitive action while others disagree (quotations provided by Syed Kamran Mirza

):
In most interpretations of Sharia, conversion by Muslims to other religions, is strictly forbidden and is termed apostasy. Muslim theology equates apostasy to treason, and in most interpretations of sharia, the penalty for apostasy is death.
In many Muslim countries, the accusation of apostasy is even used against non-conventional interpretations of the Quran. The severe persecution of the famous expert in Arabic literature, Prof. Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd, is an example of this. In some countries, Sunni and Shia Muslims often accuse each other of apostasy. The current civil strife in Iraq is explained by many in terms of the extremely harsh religious opposition between Sunnis and Shias in Iraq.

Customs and behaviour

See also Islamic hygienical jurisprudence Practitioners of Islam are generally taught to follow some specific customs in their daily lives. Most of these customs can be traced back to Abrahamic traditions in Pre-Islamic Arabian society. Due to Muhammad's sanction or tacit approval of such practices, these customs are considered to be Sunnah (practices of Muhammad as part of the religion) by the Ummah (Muslim nation). It includes customs like:

Saying Bismillah (in the name of God) before eating and drinking.

Using the right hand for drinking and eating.

Saying As-Salamu Alaykum (peace be upon you) when meeting someone and answering with Wa alaykumus-Salam (and peace be upon you).

Saying Alhamdulillah (all gratitude is for only God) when sneezing and responding with Yarhamukallah (God have mercy on you).

Saying the Adhan (prayer call) in the right ear of a newborn and the Iqama in its left.

In the sphere of hygiene, it includes:

Clipping the moustache
Shaving the pubic hair
Removing underarm hair
Cutting nails
Circumcising the male offspring
Cleaning the nostrils, the mouth, and the teeth and
Cleaning the body after urination and defecation

Abstention from sexual relations during the menstrual cycle and the discharge, and ceremonial bath after the menstrual cycle, puerperal discharge, and Janabah (seminal/ovular discharge or sexual intercourse).

Burial rituals include funeral prayer of bathed and enshrouded body in coffin cloth and burying it in a grave.

Rituals

There are two festivals that are considered Sunnah.

Eid ul-Fitr

Eid ul-Adha Rituals associated with these festivals are:

The Prayer and the Sermon on Eid day.

Takbirs (glorifying God) after every prayer in the days of Tashriq (Normally these days are considered to be the ones in which pilgrims stay at Mina once they return from Muzdalifah for example 10th, 11th, 12th, and 13th of Dhu al-Hijjah.)

Sacrifice of unflawed, four legged grazing animal of appropriate age after the prayer of Eid ul-Adha in the days of Tashriq.

Dress codes

The Qur'an also places a dress code upon its followers. The rule for men has been ordained before the women: Allah then says in the Qur'an, All those men in whose presence a woman isn't obliged to practise the dress code are known as her mahrams. Men have a more relaxed dress code: the body must be covered from knee to waist. However under (strict interpretation of) Sharia Law, women are required to cover all of their bodies except hands and face. The rationale given for these rules is that men and women are not to be viewed as sexual objects. Men are required to keep their guard up and women to protect themselves. In theory, should either one fail, the other prevents the society from falling into fitna (temptation or discord).
However, whether the veil or headscarf is a real Quranic obligation, there are many different opinions. Fundamentalists as Yusuf Al-Qaradawi claim it is, while many others, such as Mohammed Arkoun, Soheib Bencheikh, Abdoldjavad Falaturi, Jamal al Banna claim it isn't. However, the first group appears dominant: "Jamal al Banna has been for a number of years one of the few mainstream Muslim scholars to argue that the Muslim headscarf, or hijab, isn't an Islamic obligation." ((External Link

), p. 75). Turkey, a secular Muslim-majority country, had controversial laws against these dress codes in schools and work places. After the declaration of the Republic in 1923, as part of revolutions brought by Atatürk, a modern dress code was encouraged. The law changed early in 2008, with much debate, to allow a hijab while attending public school in Turkey as well as France, where the recently enacted rule caused huge public controversy.
It is a common concern in the west that Muslim women are oppressed and forced to wear the Hijab or headscarf by their male counterparts. Muslim males contend that the majority of women choose to wear the garment of their own free will. The main principle reason for the hijab is modesty, which isn't wishing to receive unnecessary attention from people, such as admiration and flattery, envy, or, most importantly, sexual attraction from those other than her husband. Great care is taken to keep sexual thoughts, feelings and interactions to within the boundaries of the marital relationship.
One of the garments 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.

Non-Muslims

Under Sharia law non-Muslims may be subjected to Sharia Laws however it codifies the treatment of dhimmis in relation to the Muslim state and in cases of over-lapping jurisdiction. The jizya or tax is enforced on those who broke a treaty or attacked Muslim with no right (as a punishment) or required from those who ask for protection without enrolling in the army. The rules include privilege to practice their own religion, except for public demonstration of non-Muslim religious practices and the right to convert Muslims.
The core component of treatment is the jizya, or tax specifically upon non-Muslims. The jizya originates in the Qur'an which says The "Book" refers to the People of the Book, Jews and Christians, who don't follow their religion righteously, but the jizya was extended to all conquered non-Muslims. The jizya ultimately is less than the Zakah (money given to the poor and needy) and Sadaqah (charity) that Muslims give.
However, verse 2:190 states: "Fight in the way of Allah against those who fight against you, but begin not hostilities. Lo! Allah loveth not aggressors."

Further Information

Get more info on 'Shari Ah'.

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