19 Facts About Islamic Law

Traditional theory of Islamic Law jurisprudence recognizes four sources of Sharia: the Quran, sunnah, qiyas, and ijma.

On this pre-Islamic Law understanding added a debate about whether a Muslim can be executed for a non-Muslim during the Islamic Law period.

Global Islamic Law movements have at times drawn on different madhhabs and at other times placed greater focus on the scriptural sources rather than classical jurisprudence.

Islamic Law jurists were commonly in attendance and a judge often presided over the court as a deputy of the ruler.

Social fabric of pre-modern Islamic Law societies was largely defined by close-knit communities organized around kinship groups and local neighborhoods.

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Unlike pre-modern cultures where the ruling dynasty promulgated the law, Islamic law was formulated by religious scholars without involvement of the rulers.

Traditional Islamic law assumes a patriarchal society with a man at the head of the household.

Non-Muslims residing under Islamic Law rule had the legal status of dhimmi, which entailed a number of protections, restrictions, freedoms and legal inequalities, including payment of the jizya tax.

British administrators felt that Sharia rules too often allowed criminals to escape punishment, as exemplified by Hastings' complaint that Islamic law was "founded on the most lenient principles and on an abhorrence of bloodshed".

Islamic Law championed a creative approach to ijtihad that involved direct interpretation of scriptures as well as the methods of takhayyur and talfiq.

Islamic Law drafted the civil codes of Egypt and Iraq based on a variety of sources, including classical fiqh, European laws, existing Arab and Turkish codes, and the history of local court decisions.

The 2003 reform of Moroccan family law, which sought to reconcile universal human rights norms and the country's Islamic heritage, was drafted by a commission that included parliamentarians, religious scholars and feminist activists, and the result has been praised by international rights groups as an example of progressive legislation achieved within an Islamic framework.

Timur Kuran states that the treatment of written evidence in religious courts in Islamic Law regions created an incentive for opaque transactions, and the avoidance of written contracts in economic relations.

Kevin Boyle criticized the decision for not distinguishing between extremist and mainstream interpretations of Islam and implying that peaceful advocacy of Islamic Law doctrines is not protected by the European Convention provisions for freedom of religion.

Representatives of the Organisation of Islamic Law Cooperation have petitioned the United Nations to condemn "defamation of religions" because "Unrestricted and disrespectful freedom of opinion creates hatred and is contrary to the spirit of peaceful dialogue".

Early Islamic jurists set the standard for apostasy from Islam so high that practically no apostasy verdict could be passed before the 11th century, but later jurists lowered the bar for applying the death penalty, allowing judges to interpret the apostasy law in different ways, which they did sometimes leniently and sometimes strictly.

Many prominent Islamic Law scholars, including al-Qaradawi himself, have issued condemnations of terrorism in general terms.

Early Islamic law developed a number of legal concepts that anticipated similar such concepts that later appeared in English common law.

Islamic Law argued that these systems shared fundamental freedoms: the freedom of a professor to profess his personal opinion and the freedom of a student to pass judgement on what he is learning.