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496conclusionof the divine message. He represented ‘the completion ofprophethoods’ but not the ultimate level of the Book’s interpretation.22. We have shown the importance of recognising the differencesbetween Islamic sharÊ#a and Islamic fiqh. Islamic sharÊ#a, as wedefined it, contains those legal verses of the Book that shareAllah’s absolute ‘being’, whereas Islamic fiqh or jurisprudencerepresents the contingent nature of human interaction withand understanding of the divine legislation at a specific timeand place in human history. Whereas Islamic sharÊ#a is divine,Islamic fiqh is human. The distinction between sharÊ#a and fiqhhelps us to further differentiate between al-isl§m and al-muslimån.Whereas al-isl§m is represented by the Book, the term muslimånrefers to human beings who interact, historically, intellectually,and socially with the divine text. In other words, the muslimånpersonify the historical presence of the Book and, by doing so,differ immensely in their interpretation of it.We have made it clear in all chapters of this volume that weregard the whole literature of Islamic fiqh as a first reading orfirst understanding (i.e., context-based application) of thedivine text and its sacred injunctions. We see it as our tasktoday to add to this a second reading which is firmly rooted inthe twenty-first century. This requires us to fully apply modernparadigms of knowledge and learning so that we may gobeyond the premodern foundations and sources of Islamic fiqh.Following this logic, we are convinced that in the future therewill be further readings, for example, a third rereading, a fourthrereading, a fifth … and so forth, until the coming of the LastHour.23. In our interpretations of the legal verses of the Book we appliedthe scholarly principle ‘legal injunctions change with thechanges of time’. We are convinced that legal rulings do changeas a result of epistemological and scientific developments thattake place in our societies. Being true to this principle, we haveinterpreted the verses of inheritance more in line with modernstatistics and mathematics than with explanatory models thatexisted in ninth-century Arabia. Consequently, we were ableto remove insignificant factors of medieval fiqh thinking, suchas questions of obedience and disobedience, of mental soundnessand madness, and were thus able to see things from a