Sharia

Shariah Law

Sharia is said to be a body of religious law that form an Islamic tradition based on scriptures of Islam, particularly the Quran and hadith. It supposedly refers to immutable, intangible divine law.

It claims to act as a code for living that all Muslims must adhere to, including prayers, fasting, and donations to the poor, etc. It has been stated that it aims to help Muslims understand how they should lead every aspect of their lives according to God's wishes.

The Path

Sharia (Arabic: sharīʿah, often spelled Shariah) means “the path” or “the path to the watering place.” What was first known as Christianity was also called The Way.

If Shariah means the path and Christianity was called the way are they compatible, divergent, or even opposites?

In Islam it refers to the body of religious, moral, and legal guidance that Muslims believe God revealed to regulate belief, worship, personal conduct, family life, commerce, and—in some interpretations—public law and governance of a nation.

Civil law is usually based on written codes that grew out of Roman law. But it can refer to private-law of any system that deals with disputes between individuals rather than Criminal law of a state.

While, some will say Sharia law does not belong to the civil-law family, it can supply rules for civil (private) disputes and can be allowed to sit alongside other civil-law codes and even supersede them. It is simply not considered a "species of civil law".

For this reason "Legal Systems" of law such as civil law, common law, religious or ecclesiastical law, customary law, and other mixed systems maybe considered distinct from the unique category known as Islamic law, such as Shariah Law.

Its primary sources as the Quran and Sunnah, as interpreted through clerics who claim it has a divine-origin therefore claims it is supreme to man made laws.

So, it is clearly not simply "religious" even though it includes "ritual, ethical, and conscience-based rules, but it also serves as both criminal and private law.

Sharia’s scope is therefore wider than typical Western civil or criminal codes and does not advocate equal application of the law or justice to all.

It does claim to address the relationships with God, neighbors, the state, and even one’s own conscience, covering worship, family, contracts, inheritance, and certain criminal penalties or the lack of them for known crimes in the world such as false oaths, robbery, or rape, even murder.

This inequality of penalties and the application of Shariah law seems to conflict with many previous principles of law.

• 2 Corinthians 6:14 "Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness?"

It should be very clear that those who follow the command to terrorize the unbeliever do not follow the God of the prophets of Abraham, Moses, or Jesus as recorder in the Book, aka The Bible.

Therefore no one who believe in the way expressed in the Book should be yoked with those who advocate Shariah Law.

There are five distinct categories: obligatory, recommended, permitted, discouraged, and forbidden.

Sharia Law and Islamic Code

Sharia is the broader body of Islamic religious law drawn from the Quran, the Prophet’s example (Sunnah), scholarly consensus, and analogical reasoning, as interpreted by jurists in a particular school of fiqh. In Iran that school is Twelver Ja‘fari Shiism.

The Islamic Penal Code is the state’s written criminal statute that turns selected Sharia rules into enforceable national law. The two, both Sharia rules and Islamic Code, are linked by the Iranian Constitution.

Article 4 of the Constitution states that every civil, penal, financial, and other law must rest on “Islamic criteria.” The Guardian Council, whose six faqih members are appointed by the Supreme Leader, reviews legislation to confirm it meets that test. Article 167 further instructs judges to consult “authoritative Islamic sources and authentic fatwas” when the written code is silent.

The 2013 Penal Code therefore organizes offenses and penalties according to the classical Sharia categories:

• Hudud — fixed punishments whose type and amount are regarded as set by God (adultery, certain sexual acts, theft that meets strict conditions, drinking alcohol, moharebeh, ifsad fil-arz, insulting the Prophet, etc.).
• Qisas — retaliation (“an eye for an eye”) for intentional killing or bodily injury.
• Diyat — prescribed blood-money payments for unintentional harm or when retaliation is waived; the detailed tables for organs and functions (including the testicle provisions in Articles 665–666) come directly from Sharia rulings.
• Ta‘zir — discretionary punishments left to the legislator or judge for everything else. These can draw on Sharia principles of public order and deterrence but are not fixed in the primary sources; they include imprisonment, fines, and flogging for offenses such as the hijab rule.

In summary, Sharia supplies the religious sources and categories; the Islamic Penal Code is the state’s attempt to translate those sources into a single, numbered statute that courts can apply. The result is a hybrid: parts of the code quote or closely follow classical fiqh, while other parts (especially ta‘zir and procedure) reflect modern legislative choices that the Guardian Council has accepted as compatible with Islam.