Sharia or Islamic law served as a common code of legal system and scales of justice for centuries across a population of diverse demographic, cultural and racial backgrounds. Since Muslims accepted Sharia as a legal system derived from revelation and Sunnah, it was regarded as an authority above all human authority. This perspective established the 'rule of law' concept in theory and practice in the vast Muslim world as early as ^th century at a time when the rest of the world was far behind in legal development. It ensured that freedom of belief and rights to life, personal property, reproduction, and health (both mental and physical) were protected by Sharia.

Having said that the Sharia should not be defined only to include 'Islamic law'. In the broadest sense, Sharia can be defined as the social reflection of Islam. Since in the past it was based on the Qur'an and the Sunnah of the Prophet it is also considered divine. Strictly speaking Sharia in its totality is not divine. It is a human attempt to understand the divine will in a particular context using the divine sources of the Qur'an and the confirmed Sunnah of the Prophet as a source. Since the social setting of societies and their associated needs and relationships change, Sharia should by dynamic enough to find solutions to new needs and challenges and evolve in due process. However, this has not happened in Modern Muslim history for two reasons.

The freezing of interpretation: The closure of the gates of ijtihad (the endeavour to generate a ruling) has caused Islamic legislation to freeze in time. Initially, this appeared to make sense. The theology was clearly set in the Qur'an and all Muslims understood it. Islamic practice was firmly established and based on the Sunnah of the Prophet, which was collected in volumes of hadith books sorted, filtered and ordered in all ways imaginable. Every verse of the Qur'an and every narration from the Prophet were examined for legal deductions. It seemed that all that is humanly possible was done in the development of the Sharia. However, in an error of judgment, the mistaken assumption that the social aspect of life stayed constant froze the Sharia even in the dynamic social domain. It should be noted that this freeze was not imposed on people, but rather, scholars saw this as a natural end of a long process. Nevertheless, the development of legislation continued especially in the Ottoman Empire. Towards the end of 19^th century, a major project was initiated to codify the Sharia writings in the format of contemporary legislation, and then, develop it to meet contemporary needs. As a result, a number of volumes of what came to be called Majalla started to emerge. Unfortunately, this project came to a grinding halt with the second major devastation to face the Muslim world.

European colonisation of the Muslim world and the impact of European imperialism of the 19^th and 20^th centuries have caused an abrupt halt in the development of Islamic law. With all their religious, cultural and political institutions destroyed, Muslims had to struggle for their very survival let alone develop Islamic law to meet the needs of a contemporary Muslim society, creating a historic gap between the past and the present that still exists today.

Muslims demand the application of Sharia thinking that it will solve all their problems knowing that contemporary problems of poverty, lawlessness, oppression from the ruling elite, social degradation of society did not exist in their history when Sharia was in place. However, for the reasons mentioned above, wherever the 'Sharia' is imposed – that is the legislation of the past two hundred years – out of context of the time and place in which it was formulated, Muslim societies take on a medieval appearance. What needs to be done today is to review and codify S h a r i a in the modern context to meet the needs of a changed world staying true to the spirit of Islam and the principles of the Qur'an and Sunnah. Then again, there are deeper problems that exist in the Muslim world before this task can be undertaken. I will explain these further in Chapter 12.