Page 182 - UAE Truncal States
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The Islamic Basis of Society

        Ihe religious political, social, domestic and private life of those who
        profess Islam.  "57  This collection of principles for all affairs of life,
        sharl'ah, was compiled from all the passages of the Koran which
        relate to the behaviour of man in respect to God and to his fellow-
        men, and was supplemented by the traditions (sunnah).50 This very
        wide role of sharl'ah does not, however, concern a person’s religious
        feeling and the individual’s inner consciousness of God’s existence
        and is therefore not quite co-extensive with the meaning of the word
        Islam itself.
          To be a Muslim implies that one has knowledge of all the basic
        aspects of sharl'ah. This knowledge is not necessarily acquired
         through reading and studying; because sharl'ah relates to all
         activities of man, this knowledge is handed down from one
         generation to the next and is the essential, formative agent of the
         society into which a person in the Trucial Slates is born. The common
         knowledge, understanding and acceptance of God’s laws has been
         one of the fundamental reasons for the cohesion of the society in this
         area. The verbatim application of the totality of sharl'ah was not
         feasible in countries, societies, peoples and ages which were different
         from that of the Hijaz during the Prophet’s lifetime. The concept of
         sharl'ah as the one and only code of conduct and of law became
         limited for practical reasons; and eventually it came to be understood
         as a system of legal pronouncements for certain matters only, and
         operating parallel with traditional law, Stale law and other sources
         of law and jurisdiction.
         Shari'ah as a source of law for formal jurisdiction
         In this narrow sense sharl'ah is now understood in most Islamic
         States as the law which is applied by the qudah of the special
         sharl'ah courts in the cases which these courts are entitled to handle,
         that is, cases concerning marriage, divorce, inheritance and similar
         matters.
           Until relatively recently no law courts of any kind existed in this
         area; the traditional tribal society turned to the family elders,
         shaikhs, walis, Rulers or qudah to obtain justice.59 At these different
         levels of jurisdiction the deliberations of the adjudicator and the
         attitude of the parties to the verdict were all based on the sharl'ah and
         the customary tribal law fur/), often supplemented by a Ruler’s
         decree. Only at the level of a qadi specially employed by a Ruler was
         the division between the formalised and codified sharl'ah and any
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