This Religion Is a Science 167The Islamic law has not come into being the way conventional law
has. It has not had to undergo the same process of evaluation as all
the man-made laws have done. The case of the Islamic law is not
that it began with a few rules that gradually multiplied or with rudi-
mentary concepts refined by cultural process with the passage of
time; nor did this law originate and grow along with the Islamic
community.As a matter of fact, that is exactly how the Shariah developed:
“with rudimentary concepts refined by cultural process with the pas-
sage of time.” This was a process influenced not only by local cultural
practices but by both Talmudic and Roman law. With the exception of
the Quran, every single source of Islamic law was the result of human,
not divine, effort. The early schools of law understood this and so rep-
resented nothing more than trends of thought that existed within the
Muslim community. The sources from which these schools formed
their traditions, especially ijma, allowed for the evolution of thought.
For this reason, the opinions of the Ulama—whether Rationalist or
Traditionalist—were constantly adapting to contemporary situations,
and the law itself was continually reinterpreted and reapplied as nec-
essary.
Regardless, none of the legal decisions made by any of these
schools of law were binding on individual Muslims. In fact, until the
modern period, it was common for believers to switch their allegiance
from one school to another at their pleasure, and there was nothing
expressly prohibiting a Muslim from accepting Maliki doctrine on
some issues and Hanafi doctrine on others. So it is simply unreason-
able to consider what is so obviously the result of human labor, and so
plainly subject to changing human biases, to be the infallible, unalter-
able, inflexible, and binding sacred law of God.
Even the most cursory analysis of the development of the Shariah
demonstrates how both the law and the Revelation grew “along with
the Islamic community.” The Quran itself clearly indicates that while
its message is eternal, it was revealed in response to very specific his-
torical situations. The more Muhammad’s community evolved, the
more the Revelation changed to adapt to its needs. Indeed, during the