Shariah

• Source: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Shariah

"Total and unqualified submission to the will of Allah is the fundamental tenet of Islam: Islamic law is therefore the expression of Allah's command for Muslim society and, in application, constitutes a system of duties that are incumbent upon a Muslim by virtue of his religious belief".

"The Shariah differs from Western systems of law in 2 principal respects. In the first place the scope of the Shariah is much wider, since it regulates an individual's relationship not only with one's neighbors and with the state, which is the limit of most other legal systems, but also with God and with one's own conscience. The Shariah is also concerned as much with ethical standards as with legal rules, indicating not only what an individual is entitled or bound to do in law but also wat one ought, in conscience, to do or refrain from doing. The 2nd major distinction is the result of the Islamic concept of law as the expression of the divine will. With the death of the Prophet in 632, communication of the divine will to human beings ceased so that the terms of the divine revelation were henceforth fixed and immutable. When, therefore, the process of interpretation and expansion of this source material was held to be complete with the crystallization of the doctrine in the medieval legal manuals, Shariah law became a rigid and statis system. Unlike secular legal system that grow out of society and change with the changing circumstances of society, Shariah law was imposed upon society from above. In Islamic jurisprudence it is not society that molds and fashions the law but the law that precedes and controls society.
Such a philosophy of law poses fundamental problems of principles for social advancement in contemporary Islam. How can the traditional Shariah law be adapted to meet the changing circumstances of modern Muslim society?