34 Facts About Sharia

Sharia is a body of religious law that forms part of the Islamic tradition.

The Islamic revival of the late 20th century brought along calls by Islamism movements for full implementation of Sharia, including hudud corporal punishments, such as stoning.

The introduction of Sharia-based laws has been cited as a cause of conflict in some African countries, such as Nigeria and Sudan, and some jurisdictions in North America have passed bans on use of Sharia, framed as restrictions on religious or foreign laws.

The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg ruled in several cases that Sharia is "incompatible with the fundamental principles of democracy".

Sharia rulings fall into one of five categories known as “the five decisions”: mandatory (fard or wajib), recommended (mandub or mustahabb), neutral (mubah), reprehensible (makruh), and forbidden (haram).

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Additionally, since Sharia contained few provisions in several areas of public law, Muslim rulers were able to legislate various collections of economic, criminal and administrative laws outside the jurisdiction of Islamic jurists, the most famous of which is the qanun promulgated by Ottoman sultans beginning from the 15th century.

Sharia was intended to regulate affairs of the Muslim community.

In family matters the Sharia court was seen as a place where the rights of women could be asserted against their husband's transgressions.

This, together with their conception of Islamic law as a collection of inflexible rules, led to an emphasis on traditionalist forms of Sharia that were not rigorously applied in the pre-colonial period and served as a formative influence on the modern identity politics of the Muslim world.

Many Muslims today believe that contemporary Sharia-based laws are an authentic representation of the pre-modern legal tradition.

Abduh viewed only Sharia rules pertaining to religious rituals as inflexible, and argued that the other Islamic laws should be adapted based on changing circumstances in consideration of social well-being.

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

Sharia drafted the civil codes of Egypt and Iraq (1951) based on a variety of sources, including classical fiqh, European laws, existing Arab and Turkish codes, and the history of local court decisions.

Full implementation of Sharia theoretically refers to expanding its scope to all fields of law and all areas of public life.

The various ways in which property can be acquired under Sharia are purchase, inheritance, bequest, physical or mental effort, diya and donations.

Sharia plays a role beyond religious rituals and personal ethics in some countries with Muslim minorities.

For example, in Israel Sharia-based family laws are administered for the Muslim population by the Ministry of Justice through the Sharia Courts.

Unlike common law, judges' verdicts do not set binding precedents under the principle of stare decisis, and unlike civil law, Sharia is left to the interpretation in each case and has no formally codified universal statutes.

Sharia'sba has been invoked in several Muslim-majority countries as rationale for blocking pornographic content on the internet and for other forms of faith-based censorship.

However, while most of those who support implementation of Sharia favor using it in family and property disputes, fewer supported application of severe punishments such as whippings and cutting off hands, and interpretations of some aspects differed widely.

In particular, in countries where Muslim citizens have little experience with rigid application of Sharia-based state laws, these notions tend to be more associated with Islamic ideals like equality and social justice than with prohibitions.

The issue of "liberty versus Sharia" was called a "momentous civilisational debate" by right-wing pundit Diana West.

Those who adhere to a confrontational view of Sharia tend to ascribe many undesirable practices to Sharia and religion overlooking custom and culture, even if high-ranking religious authorities have stated the opposite.

In 1998 the Constitutional Court of Turkey banned and dissolved Turkey's Refah Party over its announced intention to introduce Sharia-based laws, ruling that it would change Turkey's secular order and undermine 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.

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Patrick Glenn states that Sharia is structured around the concept of mutual obligations of a collective, and it considers individual human rights as potentially disruptive and unnecessary to its revealed code of mutual obligations.

Abdel al-Hakeem Carney, in contrast, states that Sharia is misunderstood from a failure to distinguish Sharia from siyasah.

The expert on terrorism Rachel Ehrenfeld wrote that the "Sharia's finance is a new weapon in the arsenal of what might be termed fifth-generation warfare (5GW)".

Musawah, CEDAW, KAFA and other organizations have proposed ways to modify Sharia-inspired laws to improve women's rights in Muslim-majority nations, including women's rights in domestic abuse cases.

In many countries, in legal proceedings relating to Sharia-based personal status law, a woman's testimony is worth half of a man's before a court.

Sharia recognizes the basic inequality between master and slave, between free women and slave women, between believers and non-believers, as well as their unequal rights.

Sharia authorized the institution of slavery, using the words abd and the phrase ma malakat aymanukum ("that which your right hand owns") to refer to women slaves, seized as captives of war.

Sharia 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.

For example, Sharia classically recognizes only natural persons, and never developed the concept of a legal person, or corporation, i e, a legal entity that limits the liabilities of its managers, shareholders, and employees; exists beyond the lifetimes of its founders; and that can own assets, sign contracts, and appear in court through representatives.