Qur'an,

From the birth of Islam,

it has always been understood that the Qur'an

must be the primary source of any form of law devised by muslims,

just as it is the primary source

for all muslim understandings.

Yet the Qur'an itself doesn't describe itself as a book of law,

but simply as a guide,

rarely defining limits

but being something much looser,

signs pointing in opposite directions,

good and bad,

explaining what lies at the end of each way,

and reminding us to make conscious choices.

Of the thousands of verses

only a couple of hundred

are thought of as defining laws,

and only four acts have defined punishments,

all of which seem strangely cruel

from a modern Scottish perspective.

And of course, since the death of the Messenger

it has been recognised that it is not possible to understand the Qur'an without the Sunna.

Our understanding of the Qur'an is shaped by the Sunna,

the Reading's context being the Messenger's life experience.

The Qur'an speaks to the community's ongoing

ever changing situation

and guides it.

Its specificity even comes down to

the naming of individuals involved.

But our doorway into the sunna is the hadith traditions,

and unlike the Reading itself they are fragile,

dependent on perceptions and understandings of those present

and those that came after,

and open to the limitations of human memory.

So as the community grew

and spread around the world,

and the number of strange and different legal situations to be judged

expanded exponentially,

muslim lawyers were in the strange position

of reducing the centrality of the Reading

and replacing and even abrogating it by Hadith and Ijma.

But this assumption of their superiority over the Qur'an for legal judgements

may have been practical and necessary

but also moved such judgements away from God's words,

and away from being able to claim Divine authority.

The Qur'an was always different.

The Reading was always preserved intact

through its recitation in the Sala,

and its collection as a text,

While the beauty of its language,

and the strangeness of its format,

and the subtlety of its inner connections,

always meant that the Qur'anic sciences

would be wide ranging.

From the root meanings of its words

and their grammatical links,

to the location of specific revelations and their context,

these sciences all recognised the Reading

as the Seal of the line of Messengers through Abraham,

a miraculous event

equivalent to those of Moses and Jesus,

a Revelation in time and place with eternal and universal relevance.

Of course, complex understandings and sciences

are not crucial to muslim worship.

Great intellect is not required.

Reverence for the book in material form

can substitute as a personal link to the event of Revelation.

But whether the Reading is understood to be literal or not,

with regard to the text of the Reading

it has a similar unanimity to the practice of the 'Ibadat

Those words are available to everyone,

but the text is not the Reading.

For the companions of the Messenger,

the Reading was not a book bound within pages,

it was God speaking directly into their lives,

an ongoing event,

learned in scraps that could be written on a piece of bone or a palm leaf.

And the Book has many different manifestations,

So the Qur'an has universal relevance

to all times and places,

but can only be understood considering the context of its revelation.

We need the Sunna to understand its meaning,

and we need the cultural context of the time

to understand the Sunna.

At the time of the Messenger,

there was clearly nothing remotely like our present understanding of Sharia

no courts, no judges, just God and the Messenger to listen to.

The community followed a Madinan formulation

of the old eye for an eye laws of retribution,

but people were mainly left to align themselves to them

by public agreement and not militarised compulsion.

After all, the Reading states

that there is no compulsion in the muslim way of life,

and Sharia' as the law of the state, imposed by state authority,

is by its nature one of compulsion.

To say that the Reading is universal

doesn't mean that understandings of the time

are also relevant to our current world context.

There were always arguments

as to just how literal was its meaning,

and wars have been fought over whether God really has hands in the same form as humans,

or whether the text was metaphorical,

arguments as to whether God could be imagined in material terms.

This as opposed to being "seen" in immaterial qualities

like Mercy,

a non-material God

with a Face that can be seen wherever we look,

a view that might be considered more appropriate

for educated young muslims today.

But lawyers like things to be less slippery,

and the handful of verses that can be read as the prescriptive basis of the Sharia

were rapidly taken as literal,

and fixed to be used for all times and places

in the history of the muslim world that was to follow,

a future world that was beyond the imaginings

of those who decreed those verses

to be fixed in interpretation for all time in the first place.

So living in that future world,

throws up numerous questions,

personal and communal,

national and international,

that have to be faced and answered.

Living as a minority in Scotland,

do you believe

that the rules of behaviour

defined for the original community

are directly applicable in the muslim community here and now?

What if the laws of the land

seem to clash with traditional Shari'a?

Are the Qur'anic hudood

applicable universally throughout time?

These are not new questions,

but have a particular relevance to young muslims in Scotland,

whose response to many of the directives

issued by Sharia lawyers

might be instinctively quizzical,

wondering if there might not be a view of sharia law

more akin to their everyday understandings of what is good and bad.

For the Qur'an was revealed in more brutal times,

and spoke to a community, harassed, persecuted,

and under physical attack

simply for their beliefs,

a time when personal and group power

were largely acquired and expressed

through threat of physical force,

small wars being seen as a legitimate way of acquiring slaves and booty.

So in the absence of any system of incarceration,

punishments for agreed social transgressions

were similarly physical.

And lashing or a severed hand

may have been appropriate at the time,

but nowadays we are used to punishments

that allow more time for the correction of judicial mistakes affecting innocent people,

so is it possible for sharia law to be adjusted to suit?

Laws were redefined in the early days of Islam,

not least by the Qur'an itself.

When the community moved from Makka to Madina,

their situation changed from minority to majority,

and in this new context, some ayats seemed to overrule previous revelations,

a situation referred to in 2.106

which can be translated as

“Whenever We abrogate any verse or postpone it

We bring a better verse or a similar one.”

The prior verse is forgotten, or put to one side,

but it is not removed from the Reading.

The later verse is then seen as legally binding at the time,

but the Qur'an is beyond time,

and even without our current understanding

of the space related nature of time,

the sequential nature of such abrogation

is not necessarily appropriate

for laws that are to span centuries.

But the critical issue

with regard to the reformation of sharia law for current times

concerns the distinction between those Makkan and Madinan surahs,

and what we mean by the principle of abrogation.

The distinction between the two phases of the Revelation

are recognised as important enough

to have the location of the revelation

noted at the start of every sura.

The suras are distinguished by the changing context

of the social situation of the muslim community.

Mahmoud Mohamed Taha argues

that the primary Makkan ayats are abrogated for the Madinan community,

not with the sense of new rulings to be forever fixed and permanent,

but simply the form that could be understood and accepted

by that community at that time.

Because of their social context

the aims of the primary texts can be seen as no more than postponed

until such times as muslim society was capable of following the sunna

in a way that exceeds prior understanding of sharia

and is able to reshape it.

It is said that the Messenger said

“We the Messengers

have been instructed

to address people in accordance with the level of their understanding”,

and in this we can see the distinction between the sunna and the shari'a.

The sunna is the whole life example of the Messenger,

a perfection of human behaviour for all humans in all times to aspire to,

while sharia is what can be expected of humankind

according to their understanding at any particular time.

The Sunna contains the sharia and exceeds it.

In the Madinan suras

the mode of address is “You Believers”,

while the Makkan suras speak in broader terms,

to the “Children of Adam”

and “Humankind”,

moving from the general to the specific.

The miracle that is the Qur'an

speaks across time,

with meaning appropriate to humanity's level of understanding

if we only apply that understanding to the words that God revealed to the Messenger for our benefit.

For all the use of Sharia

as a framework for the understanding of the muslim way of life,

when basing judgements and opinions on the Qur'an,

it does not do so on a book of Law.

It is simply a book of guidance,

good news and warning,

and a mercy to humankind.

Numerical Patterns