Page 133 - Seekers Guide Book

The Seeker’s Guide

51 What is Islamic Shariah and
who decides it?

hir‘a or Shariah literally means ‘method’. It is not
Sequivalent to law or political injunction. Even when
there is only one believer, he needs to follow the Shariah
in his private life, way of worship, ethical behaviour and
personal dealings with other fellowmen. This is Shariah
and in this sense, the word ‘Shariah’ has no political
connotation at all.

The Shariah in its present form was an innovation of
the later-day Muslims; it was not revealed in the Quran.
Let me share an example. The Constituent Assembly of
Pakistan adopted the Objectives Resolution soon after
Pakistan became an independent nation. The resolution
proclaimed that the future constitution of Pakistan would
not be modelled entirely on a European pattern, but on
the ideology of Islam. The resolution, in its entirety, has
been made part of the Constitution of Pakistan under
Article 2(A), which meant that the legislation of Pakistan
would be in the light of the Quran and Sunnah. The added
injunction introduced in the Constitution of Pakistan
was that anyone who goes astray from Islam should be
killed. This was a clear innovation in religion and was
not mentioned in the Quran. The Quran states about
those who would turn away from the revealed religion:

Whoever of you turns back from his faith
and dies as a denier of the truth will have his
deeds come to nothing in this world and in
the Hereafter, and he will be an inhabitant

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