What is Sharia law?
Sharia is an Arabic word commonly translated as the “way” or "path to water."
Briefly stated, Sharia law is the wide body of Islamic religious law. It is sometimes referred to as “Islamic law” or “Muslim law.” However, because Sharia law deals with all aspects of daily life, such as family (e.g., marriage, divorce, custody, inheritance); finance, banking, and contracts (e.g., investing, forbidding the paying or charging of interest); social issues (e.g., dress, hygiene); religion; and acts which are typically known as crimes everywhere (e.g., theft, murder, rape), it is not simply legal system or form of criminal justice, but a code of living. It is one of the three most common systems of law, after common law and civil law.
Sharia is based the Koran and the hadith (the record of the actions and sayings of the Prophet Mohammed), as well as ijma (consensus opinion of scholars) and qiyas (analogy, reasoning, precedent).
After the death of Mohammed, five schools of law developed, four out of the Sunni sect and one out of the Shi’ite sect. Even today, Sharia law is not the same in all Islamic societies, nor do all predominantly Muslim countries follow Sharia law. For example, Saudi Arabia and Iran follow Sharia law for all areas of jurisprudence; countries like Pakistan have largely secular laws, with some Islamic provisions in family law; and Turkey doesn’t base its laws on the Koran. Meanwhile, India and the Philippines, countries with minority Muslim populations, have separate Muslim civil laws.
While there are principles in Sharia law that Western nations would find entirely familiar, such as the idea of force majeure in contracts, the presumption of innocence, the principle of precedent in making legal decisions, the prohibition of illegal drugs, the right to privacy, the right of women to own property in their own right, there are also principles that Western nations consider contrary to human rights, and some that only some Western nations find contrary to human rights. For example, consider the Hadd (or Hudood) offences, which are a small set of crimes, punished by specific penalties, including capital punishment, flogging, or amputation of a hand or foot. One example of a Hadd offence is drinking alcohol, which is punishable by flogging; another is adultery, which is punishable by stoning; another is theft, which is punishable by having a hand or foot cut off. (Penalties for the Hadd offences are not universally applied in Islamic nations.) Western nations find stoning for adultery contrary to human rights; yet, only some Western nations find the death penalty in general contrary to human rights.
For more information, see:
- The Council on Foreign Relations’ “Islam: Governing Under Sharia”
- The BBC’s “Religion and Ethics – Islam,” page on Sharia law
