The Qur'an and Islamic Law

There is one subject in the last entry that I think I should make very clear to anyone who may be reading it, since I constantly see it misunderstood. This is the fact that Islam and Islamic law, as practiced and lived by millions of Muslims, does NOT depend on the Qur'an as the be-all and end-all of Islam.

Islam is NOT just what is in the Qur'an; it is also what is contained in the various collections of hadiths (the records of Muhammad's words and deeds) and in the teachings of the various schools of Islamic law (for Sunnis, the Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi'i and Hanbali). In addition, the Qur'an itself does not mean whatever you may think it means; there are many, many commentaries on the Qur'an (tafsir) by scholars that have to be taken into account.

Non-Muslims or Muslims who don't really know much about their religion will often claim that a certain Islamic practice is really not "true Islam" because it is unmentioned in the Qur'an, or because they interpret the words differently than Islamic scholars do. Well, sorry to say, this is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of Islam (specifically Sunni Islam).

Many non-Muslims of Christian background see Islam in the same way they do Christianity, specifically Protestant Christianity, in that they believe that the holy book is the be-all and end-all of the religion, and it is essentially up to the individual believer to interpret the scriptures for themselves, and these ideas have also been absorbed by some Western Muslims. Unfortunately, this is not Islam--at least, until Islam changes in a fundamental manner and is no longer recognizable as the same thing that it is today. It's more like Catholicism, which is based on "the Bible and tradition," (meaning, among other things, that the Bible means what the Church has traditionally interpreted it as saying), as I was taught in religion classes, NOT the Bible alone, which was the cry of the Protestant Reformation ("sola scriptura" and able to be interpreted by each individual believer). In the same way, Islam is not just the Qur'an, but the Qur'an and tradition (sunnah; the Qur'an means what the scholars have traditionally interpreted it as saying). But Islam is really not much like Christianity, so expecting a "reformation" along the lines of the Protestant Reformation is an exercise in futility.

One problem is that many Westerners see religion as a purely private thing, that your religion is whatever you make it out to be, and thus that whatever any individual Muslim decides is Islam, really is Islam. Suffice it to say that what may be in this context termed orthodox Islam, with its death penalties for apostasy and emphasis on tradition while excoriating "innovation" (bid'a), does not look too fondly on this concept. It is important to understand that Islam isn't just a religion to be shut away in its own little "Religion" compartment, which is the typical American concept of religion; it aims to be "a complete way of life," as countless Muslims boast, affecting every aspect of a person's life as well as society at large, and it's kind of hard to run a society on "Islam" or "Islamic principles" when everybody has their own, often contradictory, notions of what those things are. Orthodoxy in religion is required if you're going to run a whole society and legal system on it (The "Sunni" in "Sunni Islam" refers to the "sunnah," or tradition, of Muhammad). The "everyone for him/herself" view of religion only makes sense when it is a purely private thing, quite detatched from the state or laws. Imagine if a "Christian" nation wanted to rule itself according to "Christian" law; that would require some common understanding of what Christianity is, and what it requires, and what rules should follow from this understanding. Needless to say, you would never even get started, what with all the disagreements as to what Christianity really is, or what the Bible really says.

The Islamic concept of religion does not include separation of church/religion and state; instead, religion is the most important factor in the ordering of the community. The "Islamic state" is predicated on the fact that its stated goal is the spread and strengthening of Islam, which, by definition, those of other religions cannot participate in. It then follows that non-Muslims aren't really "citizens" of the state, and thus the second-class treatment of religious minorities and dhimmitude (it is to be noted that non-Muslims were not to serve in the army; non-Muslims by definition cannot engage in jihad to spread Allah's truth to the world).

And of course an Islamic state must have Islamic law, and this must be agreed on by Muslims as a group (or rather, agreed on by Islamic scholars). In this way, apostasy or heresy become treason to the state, worthy of death. The four schools of Sunni law accept each other as true, but they differ from each other generally only in small, rather unimportant ways. The substance of the law remains the same.

To sum up: Islam is not a "mere religion" like Christianity, which is mostly a set of beliefs to believe; it is really much more like Judaism, with its all-encompassing code of laws to guide every aspect of a believer's life and as a framework for the ordering of the whole society.

Now on to the Qur'an. Many people, both Muslims and non-Muslims, seriously overestimate how much of Islam and Islamic law is actually contained in the pages of the Qur'an. Typical is the following claim by an American Muslim convert (from Jan Goodwin's Price of Honor, pp.189-190 paperback): "If I want to know how late a woman can stay out, the Qur'an tells me. It says whose permission I need when I want to go out. And it tells me at what age I should discipline my child, or when youngsters should learn how to pray. The Qur'an even tells me how many miles a woman can travel from home without a mahram, a male relative chaperone. It is forty-five miles. Whatever I need about everyday life, it is there, as straightforward as a cookbook." But the truth is, not one bit of that is actually in the Qur'an--it's all in the hadiths or in the books of Islamic law! Another example is Westerners claiming that some Islamic practice or other is "un-Islamic" because it's not in the Qur'an, or because they interpret the verses differently than the Muslim scholars, thereby displaying their ignorance of what Islam and Islamic law actually consist of. To actually understand Islam, one must not just be familiar with the Qur'an but also with the collections of hadiths and the books of fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence; the actual detailing of the shari'ah, or Islamic law).

But the truth of the matter is that the Qur'an itself contains rather little actual law, and much of that is either vague or contradictory (though the Qur'an constantly states that it is "clear" and "easy to understand"). Let's take as an example the matter of wine. Qur'an 2:119 says, "They ask thee concerning wine and gambling. Say: 'In them is great sin, and some profit, for men; but the sin is greater than the profit.'" In other words, it can be both good and bad, but mostly bad, and apparently the choice of whether to drink or not is left up to the individual. In 4:43, the believers are admonished not to come to the prayer drunk. But in 5:90-91 intoxicants are forbidden completely ("O ye who believe! Intoxicants and gambling, (dedication of) stones, and (divination by) arrows, are an abomination, of Satan's handwork: eschew such (abomination), that ye may prosper. Satan's plan is (but) to excite enmity and hatred between you, with intoxicants and gambling, and hinder you from the remembrance of Allah, and from prayer: will ye not then abstain?"). To take another example, many verses in the Qur'an declare that Muhammad was not responsible for the unbelievers' refusal to believe, and that he should leave them in peace, that it is Allah's job to deal with them (such as 68:44: "Then leave Me alone with such as reject this Message: by degrees shall We punish them from directions they perceive not," and 73:11: "And leave Me (alone to deal with) those in possession of the good things of life, who (yet) deny the Truth; and bear with them for a little while."); other verses say to war against the unbelievers (9:5: "But when the forbidden months are past, then fight and slay the agans wherever ye find them, and seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem (of war)," and 9:29: "Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued," and 9:123: "O ye who believe! fight the unbelievers who gird you about, and let them find firmness in you: and know that God is with those who fear Him," and 8:38-39: "Say to the Unbelievers, if (now) they desist (from Unbelief), their past would be forgiven them; but if they persist, the punishment of those before them is already (a matter of warning for them). And fight them on until there is no more tumult or oppression, and there prevail justice and faith in Allah; but if they cease, verily Allah doth see all that they do."). What to do, what to do?

This is where hadiths, tafsir, and fiqh take over. They decide which verses are to be taken literally and which are to be taken more symbolically (and even which verses are to be taken as binding law and which as mere suggestions), but more importantly, they also mention the context and the time the verses were revealed to Muhammad. The guiding principle is that the later verses supercede the earlier ones; thus, wine is strictly forbidden because the verse prohibiting it was revealed later than the ones that grudgingly permit it. This is called the principle of abrogation. The context of revelation also helps to know when the law should be applied.

In the example above, the general consensus is that the earlier, more tolerant verses were given when Muhammad and his followers were weak and could not fight; the later, warlike verses were meant for when Muhammad was strong and able to war against the unbelievers, in order to "make Allah's word supreme," that is, to put the land under the rule of Islam and Islamic law (sometimes euphemistically described as "clearing all barriers to the spread of Islam" or even as "liberation from the slavery to man-made laws and institutions so that one is free to follow Allah's law," as noted Egyptian fundamentalist Syyed Qutub put it, thereby pulling off a truly Orwellian distortion of the meanings of "freedom" and "slavery."). It should also be noted that in general, the latter warlike verses calling for jihad abrogate the earlier, more lassiez-faire verses, although the verses revealed when Muhammad was weak may also apply to Muslims when they are weak. So, if you are weak in a non-Muslim country, you should try to peacefully persuade others to accept Islam and leave them alone if they do not; when you become powerful you should also invite them to Islam, but then war against them if they refuse. And note this hadith from al-Bukhari, the most respected collection of hadith:

Sahih Bukhari
Volume 1, Book 2, Number 24:

Narrated Ibn 'Umar:

Allah's Apostle said: "I have been ordered (by Allah) to fight against the people until they testify that none has the right to be worshipped but Allah and that Muhammad is Allah's Apostle, and offer the prayers perfectly and give the obligatory charity, so if they perform a that, then they save their lives and property from me except for Islamic laws and then their reckoning (accounts) will be done by Allah."

The version in the collection of Muslim, the second-most respected collection, reads:

Book 001, Number 0033:

It has been narrated on the authority of Abdullah b. 'Umar that the Messenger of Allah said: I have been commanded to fight against people till they testify that there is no god but Allah, that Muhammad is the messenger of Allah, and they establish prayer, and pay Zakat and if they do it, their blood and property are guaranteed protection on my behalf except when justified by law, and their affairs rest with Allah.

The point of all this is to show that the duty to wage jihad against the unbelievers is confirmed not just by what is in the Qur'an, but also by the hadiths (and since this particular hadith is reported in the two most respected collections, Sunni Muslims are bound to believe that Muhammad really said it). Islamic law concerning jihad draws directly from both the Qur'anic injunctions to wage jihad and Muhammad's own statements on the subject. You cannot just ignore it because you personally believe that Qur'an 2:256 ("Let there be no compulsion in religion") and 109:6 ("To you be your Way, and to me mine") should be the basis of Muslim dealings with non-Muslims. There is really no justification in the hadiths or in fiqh for this view (which in any case is based on verses that are early, hence abrogated). In fact, in this slightly different version of the same hadith from Muslim, one of the presumably more tolerant verses (88:22: "88:22 Thou art not one to manage (men's) affairs,") is interpreted in quite a different way:

Book 001, Number 0032:

It is narrated on the authority of Jabir that the Messenger of Allah said: I have been commanded that I should fight against people till they declare that there is no god but Allah, and when they profess it that there is no god but Allah, their blood and riches are guaranteed protection on my behalf except where it is justified by law, and their affairs rest with Allah, and then he (the Holy Prophet) recited (this verse of the Holy Qur'an):" Thou art not over them a warden" (88:22).

See? No contradiction at all between "You're not their keeper" and "Wage war on the infidels," because according to this hadith, the verse applies only to those who have already accepted Islam. In this way, the Qur'an is interpreted by means of the hadith, not by what one may want it to mean. It should be noted that verse 2:256 ("no compulsion in religion") is generally interpreted to mean that either one will not be forced to convert to Islam (but keep in mind that "forced" is a relative term--according to Maliki, Shafi'i and Hanbali law (but not Hanafi), unbelievers under Islamic rule who are not Christian or Jewish should be given the choice between Islam or death, and this is somehow not "compulsion" since, hey, they could have "freely chosen" to be put to death!) or else it is seen as being abrogated by later verses such as 3:85: ("And whoever desires a religion other than Islam, it shall not be accepted from him, and in the hereafter he shall be one of the losers."). It does not mean whatever you may want it to mean. You must take the hadiths into account.

(Whether it is actually put into practice is quite another matter entirely. Muslims have always skirted the prohibition on wine-drinking, for example, as the glorification of wine and drunkenness by countless Arab and Persian poets demonstrates! And historically, Muslims have expended more time, effort and lives fighting against each other than against the infidel. Most Muslims today are not willing or able to fight the infidel in jihad, either, preferring to live with them in some kind of peace, meaning that jihadi groups have to constantly provoke and incite in order to win adherents. Even in the Qur'an, much of surah 9 consists of berating the stragglesrs among the Muslims to go out fighting instead of sitting at home, suggesting that the problem was quite widespread, and Muhammad frequently promised infinite rewards in heaven and spoils on earth for those who fought, as an incentive to get them to do so, as in this hadith from Bukhari:

Volume 9, Book 93, Number 555

Narrated Abu Huraira:

Allah's Apostle said, "Allah guarantees (the person who carries out Jihad in His Cause and nothing compelled him to go out but Jihad in His Cause and the belief in His Word) that He will either admit him into Paradise (Martyrdom) or return him with reward or booty he has earned to his residence from where he went out."

(more hadiths extolling jihad as better than the world and what is in it here)


In one of my Qur'an translations published by the Saudi Arabian government, there is an essay at the back of the book extolling the virtues of jihad "in the way of Allah"--and it is definitely holy war, not merely an "internal struggle," as many either ignorantly or dishonestly claim--which I plan on dissecting here.)

The Qur'an cannot be understood only by itself, which is the mistake that so many non-Muslims and Muslims themselves make. For example, the Qur'an does not describe even some of the most basic practices of Islam, such as how to pray, and is somewhat vague as to exactly how many prayers there are per day and when they should be done. For that, once again, one must go to the hadiths and sunnah.

It must also be mentioned that sometimes the Qur'an is contradicted by Islamic law. For example, in 24:2, the penalty for adultery is 100 lashes, but the penalty according to all schools of Islamic law is stoning. This is based on Muhammad's sunnah recorded in hadiths, not on the words of the Qur'an itself. (It should be mentioned that there was a story that the penalty of stoning was originally part of the Qur'an, but the piece of paper it was written on was eaten by a goat. It is unknown if this is a true story or was simply made up to cover for the fact that stoning for adultery is not mentioned in the Qur'an by claiming that it was at one point.)

I should emphasize the point that Muslims (usually in the West) who reject the hadiths are considered apostates and outside Islam by Islamic religious leaders, so this avenue of reform isn't going to get very far in the Islamic world. It also means that Muslim feminists looking for a way out of the rather misogynistic shari'ah are in trouble, since the only way out is to reject or ignore many of the hadiths and completely rewrite much of Islamic law. Their big problem is that the Islamic scholars can always claim greater knowledge of Islam and Muhammad's sunnah, leaving the feminists in real danger of being labeled "apostates" or "heretics." It is also to be mentioned that, unfortunately, their work is read by Westerners, not Muslims living in Muslim lands, so it has no effect whatever on the actual practice of Islam in Muslim countries.

You simply cannot base an entire body of law on what is in the Qur'an. There just isn't enough legal material to do it. It's not like the Jewish Torah, which is mostly law; instead it has some legal verses here and there (mostly in surahs 2, 4 and 5, plus many others scattered throughout the text), but it consists mostly of admonitions by Allah to believe in Him, showing His works and divine will in nature and in tales of the prophets, many from the Bible, the rewards of heaven for the believers and the hell that will await those who reject Him and His Messenger, Muhammad. It's an extremely repetitive book, and in no logical order whatever--the surahs are merely placed in order of decreasing length, the longest first and the shortest last (generally; there are many exceptions), and any one surah does not generally have a unified subject; it often goes all over the place, often linked only by the rhyme structure (which, of course, does not show up in translation). I would describe it as "stream of consciousness," with one subject melting into another, often only minimally related, only to be taken up again later. One particular story may be told half a dozen times, and it could show up anywhere in the text. If you've ever read it all, you might have noticed that it's often hard to tell where exactly you are in the text, since it's so repetitive. It's like a fractal--no matter what the scale is, it looks and reads the same, from the longest surah to the shortest, all of which deal with the same topics in the same familiar way. Memorizing the whole of the Qur'an has a very practical side--because there isn't really any good way to find a particular verse or subject you might be looking for, so if you have the whole of the text memorized, you can then bring to mind any particular verse on any subject.

I want to add that anyone who tries to compare Judeo-Christianity with Islam by saying something like, "The Qur'an says to fight the infidels, but, hey, the Bible says that homosexuals should be stoned" has just proven they know nothing about either Judaic law or Islamic law. Jewish law is NOT based soley on the words of Torah, the same way that Islam is not based soley on Qur'an; both also depend on outside sources for much of their law, as well as for how to interpret the words of scripture themselves. In the case of Judaism, rabbis have the Talmud and many commentaries on both Torah and Talmud to define, codify, and apply halacha (Jewish law). In the case described above about stoning homosexuals, the Jewish response would be something like: Well, that law can only be applied if the Sanhedrin is in existence (it's not and hasn't been for 2,000 years), and if there are many witnesses to his guilt, and so on, the end of which is that the actual literal words will never be carried out. Add to that the Talmudic dictum that the law of the land should be followed (unlike the Muslim insistence that Muslims should always follow Allah's law wherever they might be).

There was a sect called the Karaites (People of the Scripture, more here and here in 9th century Judaism, which called for soley using the written Torah as a basis for law, rejecting all rabbinical interpretation, but it was considered heretical and eventually more or less died out. With Reform Judaism, the issue becomes moot, in the "spiritualizing away" of the letter of the law. The only way "Qur'an-only Muslims" could really make a go of it is by rejecting shari'ah (Islamic law) completely, becoming something like Reform Judaism (and this is what many of them have done), but then they would be (and are) considered outside Islam by other Muslims. Even Reform Judaism is not considered "real Judaism" by many Orthodox and Conservative rabbis, who generally come from cultures where dissent and discussion is freely allowed, so what kind of acceptance could "Reform Islam" expect, especially given the lack of freedom of speech and religion in Muslim countries?

I believe the "literalist approach" (taking the words of scripture literally without regard to their interpretation) is more of a Christian way of approaching scriptures, and a Protestant one at that. Christianity has no sacred law to be applied to all situations and in all contexts; it has generally depended on essentially secular authorities for secular law (the Roman Empire, the Byzantine Empire, the medieval kings, Parliaments), so the whole concept of "separation of church and state" came quite naturally (eventually). There does exist "Canon Law" in Catholicism and Orthodoxy, but that affects matters having to do with religion in some way, and in any case is not necessarily the "Law of God Himself." But the entire concept of "the Law" was repudiated even in the letters of Paul, so there is no real concept of it in Christianity. This is all well and good (imagine trying to separate church and state when every law of the land is based on the Bible or Christian doctrine!), but it means that Westerners, from a Christian background, are going to have a tough time really coming to terms with what Islam actually is.