Abdal Hakim Murad - The Cambridge Companion to Islamic Theology

12 Theological dimensions of Islamic law
umar f. abd-allah
introduction
Law represented one of the earliest models of intellectual activity
in Muslim culture, and traditionally lay at the core of Islamic learning.
To be a ‘‘scholar’’ (‘alim), whatever else it meant, was invariably to be
a scholar trained in God’s sacred law. Although the legal scholar did
not possess the gift of prophecy, he was deemed a ‘‘successor of the
Prophet’’. By virtue of issuing independent legal opinions, the jurisconsult
1 (muftı) in particular occupied a social position which in some ways
was reminiscent of that of the prophetic lawgiver himself.
Because of the centrality of law in the Islamic tradition, Muslim
society and culture are best accessed through it. For more than a millennium,
the religious law constituted the Muslim world’s most constant,
characteristic and unifying feature. Mainstream Sufism was the
only other dimension of Islam that enjoyed a comparable influence, but
(contrary to the misperceptions of an older generation of historians) it,
too, was erected on the law’s foundations. Today, when many aspects of
traditional Islamic society are disappearing, the religious law remains
central to the Islamic consciousness, even in Muslim nations that have
adopted secular legal systems.
theology and the religious content
of islamic law
Islam is ‘‘ruled by law’’. It is not theocratic but nomocratic in
nature, and the religious law which underpins this is all-embracing.
Kalam theology and law were independent disciplines, and many
questions – today including issues such as abortion, environmental
protection and interfaith relations – which Christians regard as theological,
are, for Muslims, not matters of theology but fundamental
questions of religious law.
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