Muslims in non-Muslim countries world over cry, off and on, for imposition of Sharia, the Allah’s law. They shout that government may change, but Allah’s law will never change. Let us examine Sharia critically to understand its genesis and divine sanctity.
Islamic ‘Sharia’ came into existence during eighth and ninth centuries. Traditional theory of Islamic jurisprudence recognizes four sources of Sharia: the Quran, Sunnah (authentic Hadith), Qiyas (analogical reasoning), and Ijma (juridical consensus).
Different legal schools, of which the most prominent are Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi’i, Hanbali and Jafari, developed methodologies for deriving Sharia rulings from scriptural sources using another process known as Ijtihad (discretionary judgment by a Mujtahid (authority in Islamic laws)
If Quran 24:58 hints of three times prayer a day, why Muslims pray five times a day like Zoroastrians of the then Persia? Is it Sharia? Quran has no mention of the word ‘Sharia’. Quran also does not speak of ‘Mufti’, ‘Alim’, ‘Maulana’ or ‘Mujtahid’.
When analogical reasoning, juridical consensus, discretionary judgment of personalities however wise they are/were, play/played important role in Sharia formulation, it no longer remains Allah’s law. It becomes oft repeated logical fallacy of “I touch the table, the table touches the ground. So I touch the ground”.