What is Sharia?
The Arabic word “shariah,” according to one modern English-language student textbook on Islam, “literally means a straight path (Quran 45:18) or an endless supply of water. It is the term used to describe the rules of the lifestyle (Deen) ordained for us by Allah. In more practical terms, shariah includes all the do’s and don’ts of Islam.”71
The Sources of Shariah
There are four sources for shariah that make it authoritative: the Quran, the Sunna, ijma, and qiyas.
Deemed the “uncreated word of Allah,” the Quran reflects direct divine revelation and is understood to be the primary source of Islamic law. After the Quran, Islamic jurists next turn to the Sunna, considered to be indirect divine revelation arising out of the hadiths, or sayings or acts of Mohammed. Ijma refers to the con38 sensus of the grand mujtahids of the past, a historic process in which, once consensus attached, became a permanent part of the immutable body of Islamic law. Finally, the fourth source for shariah is qiyas, or reasoning by analogy, which applies an accepted principle or assumption to arrive at a legal ruling.
In order fully to understand shariah, it is necessary to examine each of these sources and their contributions in turn.
The QURAN: In Islamic parlance, the Quran is considered to be the uncreated word of Allah. According to Muslim belief, it has existed since the beginning of time and was revealed by the Archangel Gabriel in the 7th Century to the Prophet Mohammed in the Arabic language of his homeland.
The SUNNA: The second most authoritative source for shariah is the Sunna, commonly understood to be the actions and sayings of the Prophet. The Sunna includes the ahadith (plural of hadith), or collections by Mohammed’s contemporaries of what he did and said during his lifetime. Also within the Sunna is the Sira, which are biographical accounts of the life of Mohammed. It should be noted that the ahadith (not the Sira) constitute the legally significant element of the Sunna.81
The many hundreds of thousands of hadiths have been recorded in a number of Hadith collections, of which six collections are held to be the most authoritative or “strong hadiths,” meaning their chain of transmission is considered solid. The two most important collections of all are those by Sahih Al-Bukhari (collected and compiled by Mohammed bin Isma'il, known as Imam Bukhari, born 810, died 870) and Sahih Muslim (Muslim bin al-Hajjaj, known as Imam Muslim, born 817/818,died 874/87.Ijma:
In addition to the Quran and Sunna, there are also two accepted secondary sources for shariah: these are ijma (consensus of the scholars) and qiyas (analytical deduction. Consensus of the Islamic jurists refers to the achievement of agreement on particular legal issues and finds its justification in numerous verses of the Quran.82 Hadith accounts also provide support with the words of Mohammed: “My followers will never agree upon an error or what is wrong.” The early Muslim scholars turned to this device of ijma only when they could not find a specific legal ruling in either the Quran or the Sunna.
QIYAS: Qiyas make up the fourth most important source for shariah. The term means “to judge by comparing with a thing.” Its methods of deductive reasoning derive from the previous three sources of authenticity, namely the Quran, the Sunna, and ijma. When a legal ruling was required but could not be found in the other sources, the Islamic jurists employed analogy, reasoning, and legal precedent to arrive at new case law.
Although all four schools of Sunni jurisprudence (Hanafi, Shafi’i, Maliki, and Hanbali) accept IJMA as a legitimate source of shariah, Shi’ite Muslims do not; however, they replace ijma with aql (or reason. Considering that Shi’ites do not accept the authority of the Sunni Caliphs after Imam Ali, it is understandable that they would reject a source of legal authority that arose under their authority. In any case, the Shi’a practice of aql is essentially identical to ijma.