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Islamic Law ( ' Shari ' A Law '

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Islamic law ("shari 'a law") is an ever-evolving and eminently flexible system of religious and legal reasoning that Muslim jurists have developed and refined over the course of nearly 1400 years. Many scholars have pointed out that the sharia is not formally a code nor a set of rules. It is a broad understanding of god’s perfect will. Shari’a is a principle that govern the behavior of Muslim individuals and discuss their duties. In order to understand the shari’a,, Muslim jurists use fiqh, their understanding of the god’s law, to issue rulings that then scholars consider to be the closest meaning of the shari’a. usul al-fiqh which is the process to understand the shari’a contains four major bases: The Quran, which Muslims believe to be …show more content…

However, Shia Muslims believe that Sunni collections of hadith are unreliable because they accept the caliphates Abu-Baker, Omar, and Uthman, and they just trust what Imams transmit. Shia Muslims have four different collections of Hadith al-Kafi, Tahdhib al-ahkam, Al-Istibsar fi ma ikhtalaf min al-akhbar and Man la yahduruh al-faqih. Both Sunni and Shia Muslims rely on their collections of hadith as primary source beside the Quran to understand the Islamic law. However, these two sources do not address all issues and topics in life. Muslim jurists have developed other methods which use the other two foundations qiyas and ijma’ to issue a decision for an issue. Qiya is a principle that use analogical reasons to judge a new topic based on a similar one from the Quran or Sunna. For example, Islam prohibit Muslims from drinking wine. Jurists refer to this prohibition using analogical reasons to judge other intoxicating drinks like beer. If finding a solution to an issue cannot be made by an analogy, then other categories can be applied to select an acceptable solution. For example, some scholars use Istihsan which means deciding in favor of the public interest. Scholars’ efforts to understand and analyze the bases of shari’a to elaborate a law is called Ijtihad, and not everyone is qualified to interpret the sources. A Muslim jurist had to know the Qur’an and the hadith very well, and how to interpret these sources as well as the

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