95To judge is a more passive requirement to arbi-
trate using God’s commands between those who
voluntarily come to you seeking such arbitration,
rather than actively seeking to “rule” over people.
In this way the linguistic dispute here over the lit-
eral meaning of these passages becomes hugely
signifi cant.
Moreover, Islamists who would insist today that
a version of shari’ah must be synchronized with law
are vulnerable to the charge that the vast majority
of shari’ah guidance— apart from the handful of
injunctions related to the penal code (hudud)—
carry with them no worldly criminal sanction for
their violation. Thus, it has been argued that even
if one were to take the view that Muslims must
“rule” by God’s revelation, that very same revelation
does not stipulate criminal sanction— hence not
mandating illegality— for almost all of what it
deems religiously impermissible (haram). In fact, by
stipulating criminal sanction for only a handful of
penal codes (hudud)— including the amputation of
the hand for theft, and so on— the text can be said
to imply that all other religiously impermissible
(haram) acts, which are the vast majority, are not
subject to any fi xed criminal law whatsoever, and
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