Fiqh Vs Sharia Essay

and social welfare. This is why it is important to distinguish between ‘fiqh’ [the legal system] and Sharia. Sharia is a Quran-based guidance on how Muslims should live a more Islamic life (Williams, 2008 p.38); Sharia does not come from the state at all. It is philosophical and its human interpretation is called ‘fiqh’. Sharia is considered immutable and infallible but fiqh is changeable. Fiqh comes from scholars based on the Quran and ‘Hadith’ [the words of Muhammad] and it applies Sharia’s morals and guidelines to day-to-day life (ibid). Because of the complexity of the Quran and the limitations of human interpretation, gray areas in the fihq make it easy for individuals and/or organizations to take advantage of the gray areas.

Sharia law is not a legal system and Muslims who follow it do not view it as a replacement for civil law. It is true that Sharia law has influenced legal systems and most Muslim-majority countries. Pre-modern Muslim regions had a system known as Siyasa where Sharia law was separated from the government

For him, people are motivated more by future expectations than past experiences and individuals behave as if motivated by goals and are guided in their behavior by these expectations (Adler, 2002 p.55). Adler explains that the real or fictional goals towards which an individual strives explain his/her behavior even though the individual may be largely unaware of them. Of particular importance as a fictive goal is the individual’s guiding self-ideal. This forms the individual’s unifying principles that safeguard self-esteem. The self ideal leads to the individual’s characteristic style of life which is the way that a person’s individuality is expressed in its own environment, in its own unique way. This is the pattern of behavior