What is sharia?

Sharia (sharīʿa, شريعة) is the path Allah has opened for human beings, toward Him and toward one another. In old Arabic the word meant the way down to a watering place: the trodden track that leads the thirsty to the river. The scholars kept that image with care. Sharia is the road to the water of life, and every ruling on it is meant to serve justice and mercy. Allah says of the Prophet ﷺ who brought it, “We sent you only as a mercy to all the worlds” (Quran 21:107).

Many people hear “sharia law” and think first of punishments. The tradition defines it far more widely. Imam Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya (d. 1350), may Allah have mercy on him, wrote in Iʿlām al-Muwaqqiʿīn that the sharia is founded on wisdom and on the welfare of people in this life and the next: “It is justice entirely, mercy entirely, benefit entirely, and wisdom entirely.” Any ruling that turns from justice to tyranny, from mercy to cruelty, or from benefit to harm, he said, is no part of the sharia, even if someone brought it in by interpretation.

What does the word sharia mean in the Quran?

The noun sharīʿa appears once in the Quran, addressed to the Prophet ﷺ:

ثُمَّ جَعَلۡنَٰكَ عَلَىٰ شَرِيعَةٖ مِّنَ ٱلۡأَمۡرِ فَٱتَّبِعۡهَا

“Then We set you on a clear path in the matter of faith, so follow it.”

Quran 45:18

A related word appears in Sūrat al-Māʾida, where Allah tells the communities of the earth, “For each of you We have appointed a law and a way (shirʿa wa minhāj). Had Allah willed, He would have made you one community” (5:48). The verse goes on to tell them to race one another in good deeds. From its first pages, the Quran presents divine law as a path with room for difference, given so that people may do good.

What is the difference between sharia and fiqh?

The scholars distinguish two things that the phrase “sharia law” often blurs. Sharia is Allah’s path itself, perfect and merciful. Fiqh (فقه), which means “understanding,” is the human effort of jurists to read that path from the Quran and the Sunnah in their own time and place. Fiqh is learned, careful, and fallible, and the Prophet ﷺ honored that effort even when it errs:

«إِذَا حَكَمَ الْحَاكِمُ فَاجْتَهَدَ ثُمَّ أَصَابَ فَلَهُ أَجْرَانِ، وَإِذَا حَكَمَ فَاجْتَهَدَ ثُمَّ أَخْطَأَ فَلَهُ أَجْرٌ»

“When a judge rules after striving for the right answer and is correct, he has two rewards. When he rules after striving and is mistaken, he has one reward.”

Sahih al-Bukhari 7352

This is the root of the schools of law: the Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi’i, and Hanbali among Sunnis, and the Jaʿfari among Shia Muslims. They often differ, and the tradition counts that difference (ikhtilāf) as a mercy. When the Abbasid caliph al-Manṣūr proposed making Imam Mālik’s Muwaṭṭaʾ the single law of the empire, Malik declined, reportedly because the Companions had spread through many lands and each region held part of their knowledge. Fiqh can therefore grow, and scholars in every age return to the sources through fresh reasoning (ijtihād, اجتهاد). That renewal is the work of progressive Islam today.

What are the objectives of sharia (maqāṣid al-sharīʿa)?

The great jurists asked what the sharia is for. Imam al-Ghazali (d. 1111) answered in al-Mustaṣfā that every ruling serves to protect five things: faith, life, mind, family and lineage, and property. Any law that protects them is in harmony with the sharia, and any law that destroys them works against it.

Imam al-Shāṭibī of Granada (d. 1388) built on this in al-Muwāfaqāt, making the objectives of the sharia (maqāṣid al-sharīʿa, مقاصد الشريعة) the measure for reading every text. Muhammad al-Tahir Ibn Ashur of Tunis (d. 1973) renewed the field in his Maqāṣid al-Sharīʿa al-Islāmiyya (1946). In our own time, Jasser Auda’s Maqasid al-Shariah as Philosophy of Islamic Law (2008) has shown how these objectives speak to human dignity, development, and rights.

The Quran gives the same measure in one verse that preachers have recited in Friday sermons for centuries:

إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ يَأۡمُرُ بِٱلۡعَدۡلِ وَٱلۡإِحۡسَٰنِ وَإِيتَآيِٕ ذِي ٱلۡقُرۡبَىٰ

“Allah commands justice, excellence, and generosity to relatives.”

Quran 16:90

What does sharia ask of a society?

A society that lives by the sharia looks after its weakest members first. Zakat is a duty, owed to the poor, the needy, the indebted, the captive, and the stranded traveler (9:60); you can read how it works in How does zakat work?. The historians report that the caliph Umar ibn al-Khattab (may Allah be pleased with him) first paid a public stipend only for weaned children. One night he heard a baby crying because its mother was weaning it early to receive the payment. The next morning he ordered a stipend for every child from birth.

Under the Umayyad caliph Umar ibn Abd al-Aziz (r. 717–720), the histories report that the zakat collectors in some provinces could find no one poor enough to receive it. Later Muslim societies built hospitals (bīmāristāns) that treated the sick without charge, and endowments (awqāf) that fed travelers, schooled orphans, and fixed bridges. The site’s articles on universal healthcare and poverty tell those stories in more detail. When a community takes the objectives of life, mind, and property seriously, they become food, healing, learning, and dignity for everyone.

Does sharia law mean harsh punishments?

The fixed penalties (ḥudūd) are a handful of rulings out of thousands, and the classical jurists surrounded them with conditions so strict that they were rarely carried out. The sound position today is that they are not for application. The reasons are set out in Does Islam really cut off hands?.

The sharia also compels no one’s conscience. “There is no compulsion in religion” (Quran 2:256), so it gives no worldly punishment for leaving Islam, as explained in What happens to Muslims who leave Islam?. A faith that is forced is no faith in Allah’s sight.

Can Muslims live by sharia in a secular country?

Yes, and most do. Most of the sharia is prayer, fasting, honesty in trade, kindness to parents, faithfulness in marriage, care for neighbors, and charity. A Muslim in Toronto or Berlin lives the sharia every time they pray on time, pay what they owe, and feed a hungry person.

The Sudanese legal scholar Abdullahi An-Na’im argued in Islam and the Secular State (2008) that a Muslim’s obedience to the sharia has worth only when it is freely chosen, so a state cannot force it on anyone in the sharia’s name. A just, neutral state that protects freedom of religion leaves Muslims free to live their faith with sincerity.

A path of ease

The Prophet ﷺ summed up the spirit of the whole sharia when he sent his companions out to teach: “Make things easy and do not make them hard; give good news and do not drive people away” (Sahih al-Bukhari 69). The Quran says the same of the fast of Ramadan, and the scholars made it a principle for the whole law:

يُرِيدُ ٱللَّهُ بِكُمُ ٱلۡيُسۡرَ وَلَا يُرِيدُ بِكُمُ ٱلۡعُسۡرَ

“Allah wants ease for you, and He does not want hardship for you.”

Quran 2:185

May Allah make us people who walk this path to the water with gratitude, who find in His law the mercy He placed there, and who carry that mercy to everyone we meet.