Shared
Way of Life

So the world of Islam

embraces every kind of geography and topography around the world,

with muslims existing in any number of different lifestyles and cultures,

now and down through the centuries,

yet amid all that variety there are those few things that tie them all together,

which display an incredible similarity

across all times and places.

Everywhere the same,

an extraordinary universality

of the form of muslim religious practice,

the forms of the 'Ibadat,

the times and motions of the Sala,

the parameters of the Saum and Hajj.

All those different people

doing the same thing.

It has often been said that Islam is a religion of orthopraxy

not orthodoxy,

the outer shape taking precedence

over inner understanding and opinion,

the outer shape allowing the possibility of that amazing unanimity.

Of course the Shahada may seem to be universal,

but betrays its link to the intellect

and its variety of personal understanding,

as it involves the meaning of words.

Similarly, the codified generosity of the Zaka requires numbers and community.

It is external form, not intellectual understanding,

that makes communal unity a possibility.

Even the Reading,

equally universal in text and recitation,

has no agreed meaning

but universal reverence.

Recognition of the point of contact between earth and heaven, human and divine is experiential,

beyond meaning,

beyond the reach of the intellect.

But although the personal and social aspects of human morality

may have an emotive contribution,

springing from the conscience deep within the heart,

they are defined by the intellect.

The intellect and its understanding are much harder to unify.

In fact, of its nature it is impossible.

But still humans have to do their best,

and the best that the early muslim community could do

managed to provide a shared approach to the do's and don'ts of the world,

and an understandings of good and bad and life's purpose,

and an approach to the parameters of individual and social behaviour,

that carried around the world

and is still recognisable today in the Shari'a.

But unlike the unanimity of the forms of muslim worship,

the Shari'a as we know it,

for all its shared vocabulary over history,

was not always this way.

It's structure did not exist at the time of the Messenger.

It is a product of the muslims that came after,

and was constrained by the understandings of those who shaped it.

But times change, and so do ways of understanding.

Our criteria with regard to truth construction have changed,

but it often seems that those practising Shari'a law have not noticed.

Shari'a and Islam are often seen as interdependent,

Shari'a being seen as how we define what is and is not Islamic,

But its current manifestation is also the thing that most

conflicts with modern understandings and causes most conflict with life in the modern world.

Shari'a is seen as an ultimate authority

yet at the same time often seems to make little sense in the modern world.

When looked at from the modern intellectual context

the way that we understand and evaluate the truth of the world nowadays,

the foundations of Shari'a are based not on anything approaching bedrock,

but on sands so shifting that they might be quicksand.

Yet on that quicksand

the whole edifice of modern Shari'a has been constructed.

Laws have been defined for every aspect of human behaviour,

along with punishments that are not mentioned in Qur'an,

formulated for acts that are not defined in the Qur'an,

or even mentioned in the Qur'an,

like the vast bulk of modern Shari'a stipulations.

Assertions of the Shari'a nowadays

may seem to be incompatible with modern thought,

leaving muslims in the strange quandary

of either believing and accepting the validity of Shari'a

or believing in what seems to make more sense.

Yet muslims are still taught not to question its foundations,

and to just pretend that it isn't built on sand,

an intellectual structure that was convenient at the time,

but nowadays simply does not stand up to the most gentle of probing

critiques that even a child could come up with.

But even though what is called Shari'a today

would seem to be unfit for purpose,

it is still commonly accepted by muslims

that the Shari'a is not only essential to Islam

but also its primary aspect,

and that it is not possible to follow the Deen without it.

This is problematic

and the situation is not helped

by pretending that the problem isn't there.

Shari'a has two aspects,

the personal and the communal,

and covers the sacred and profane,

from detailing the Fiqh of the Ibadat,

the description of those unifying fundamentals of muslim worship

the responsibility of the individual

to describing the religious responsibilities of the community.

But laws imposed by muslim rulers,

no matter how superficial their Islam,

made prescriptions for private and public behaviour ranging far beyond the Ibadat,

and all those laws have been subsumed under the title and auspices of Shari'a,

despite always being defined in a cultural context,

and with little but opinion to justify them.

Each individual's Shari'a

can only be for them,

as no-one else shares their life experience

and context in which to set judgement,

a personal responsibility that muslims always accepted.

But the whole structure of the communal Shari'a that formed long after the time of the Messenger,

steadily lost its integration with each muslim's personal life and judgement,

and turned into an academic subject

dependent on specialist interpretation

making the muslim community dependent on a muslim clergy,

claiming Divine authority

and assuming that God wouldn't let them agree on something wrong.

And why would that be?

God let Jews and Christians do it,

why not muslims?

For over the centuries

the Shari'a stagnated and calcified,

transitioning into endless commentaries,

and then yet more commentaries on commentaries,

forever looking backwards

and rejecting original thought.

But if it no longer leads people to a place of spiritual satisfaction and regeneration,

surely it can only be seen as taking them away from the path to water

and towards a path to a mirage.

So is it really still Shari'a

or just another man-made set of laws?

Giving it the name Shari'a

doesn't make the system divinely defined or authorised.

The Shari'a can be questioned and challenged

The people who claim to define laws

must always be open to challenges

to explain themselves and face argument.

To suit human need in different times and places,

the Shari'a should be like a living tree.

What is alive will bend when pushed in a different direction,

but what is brittle and dead will break away.

Like everything man-made

the Shari'a should not need to be exempt from intellectual challenge and question,

protected from the fire that cleanses and leaves pure gold.

For at its heart,

the gold of muslim understanding throughout the centuries can be found there,

understandings to enhance and beautify

any young muslim's life,

not a prison in which to cage them.

wide variety of opinions

spoken 'mythos' to written 'science'

in or out of time?