From Muhammad’s First “Revelations” in 610 C.E.

To understand how Shariah took over Islamic civilization, we must start not with later law books but with Muhammad himself. In 610 C.E., in a cave outside Mecca, he claimed to receive the first of a long series of revelations from a spirit he identified as the angel Jibril. Those early Meccan surahs emphasize the oneness of Allah, warnings of the coming judgment, and denunciations of idolatry and greed. Legal content in the narrow sense is minimal at first, but a pattern is already visible: there is one God, and human beings must submit.

Over time the revelations begin to include commands that shape behavior more concretely. The Quran calls Muhammad’s followers to prayer, to give alms, to speak truthfully, to abandon pagan practices, and to endure persecution. It repeatedly links faith with obedience. One verse says, “Obey Allah and obey the Messenger,” joining the two in a way that lays the groundwork for a legal system in which Muhammad’s words and actions become a binding norm. Another declares that “it is not for a believing man or a believing woman” to have any choice in a matter once Allah and His Messenger have decided it. In other words, Muhammad’s decisions are not suggestions; they are presented as the very will of Allah.

The decisive shift comes with the Hijrah, Muhammad’s move from Mecca to Medina in 622 C.E. There he does not function merely as a preacher but as the head of a community and, effectively, as a ruler. The so-called Constitution of Medina, a pact or series of agreements between the emigrant Muslims, the local helpers, and certain Jewish tribes, speaks of Muhammad as the arbiter in disputes. The Quranic revelations in this period turn increasingly legal. They include rules for marriage and divorce, inheritance, retaliation, warfare, political loyalty, and the treatment of Jews and hypocrites.

In Medina, Muhammad judges real cases. He orders the amputation of a thief’s hand. He presides over punishments for illicit sex, sometimes flogging, sometimes stoning, depending on the status of the offenders and the evidence. He decides disputes over land and inheritance. He directs how war booty is to be divided, with a fixed portion assigned “for Allah and the Messenger” and the rest distributed among the fighters. When a Jewish tribe is accused of treachery, he accepts an arbitrator, then enforces a judgment that leads to the execution of the men and the enslavement of women and children.

These actions are not treated by his followers as merely personal rulings. They are remembered and retold as part of the Sunnah, the normative pattern for the community. Hadith reports preserve statements in which Muhammad insists that anyone who invents a practice “not from this matter of ours” will have it rejected, and others in which he says, “I have left among you two things; if you hold fast to them, you will never go astray: the Book of Allah and my Sunnah.” In one famous report, when a companion is sent as a judge, Muhammad asks him how he will decide cases. The man replies that he will judge according to the Book of Allah; if he does not find the answer there, he will look to the Sunnah of the Messenger; if he finds nothing there either, he will exercise his judgment. Muhammad is said to approve this method.

By the time Muhammad dies in 632 C.E., the core elements of Shariah are in place. The Quran is presented as revelation from Allah. Muhammad’s words and actions are treated as authoritative explanations of that revelation. Obedience to Allah and the Messenger is understood to include obedience in legal matters: marriage, divorce, war, peace, punishment, and social order. The community expects that disputes will be settled by reference to these divine standards, not by tribal custom alone. The later edifice of Shariah is built on this foundation.

Codification Under the Rashidun and Umayyad Caliphs

After Muhammad’s death, the first four caliphs—Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman, and Ali—are remembered as the “rightly guided” leaders. In reality their rule is marked by conflict, expansion, and political struggle, but it is also the period in which the raw materials of Shariah are stabilized.

One of Abu Bakr’s earliest concerns is the preservation of the Quran itself. When many reciters are killed in battle, he fears that portions of the revelation might be lost. At his direction, and under the supervision of companions such as Zayd ibn Thabit, the scattered fragments of the Quran are gathered from parchments, shoulder blades, and human memory into a written collection. Later, under the third caliph Uthman, multiple copies of this text are produced and sent to different regions, while variant codices are ordered destroyed. This Uthmanic recension becomes the fixed standard for all later recitation and study.

At the same time, judges—qadis—begin to be appointed in the newly conquered cities of the expanding Arab-Muslim empire. These men are expected to decide cases in light of the guidance Allah has revealed. They use the Quran as far as it speaks to the issue before them. They rely on their knowledge of Muhammad’s practice and the reports of senior companions. They also use their own reasoning when no explicit text applies. This is the earliest stage of what will become fiqh, Islamic jurisprudence.

The early caliphs themselves issue legal decisions. Umar, for example, is remembered for suspending the hadd punishment for theft during a time of famine, for regulating the treatment of conquered lands, and for instituting a calendar beginning from the Hijrah. Under him and his successors, the empire spreads rapidly into Syria, Iraq, Egypt, and beyond. With that expansion comes contact with new cultures, complex tax questions, and disputes among diverse populations. The need for a consistent legal approach becomes more urgent.

Under the Umayyad dynasty (661–750 C.E.), based in Damascus, central authority grows stronger, but resentment builds among some Muslims who see the rulers as too worldly and arbitrary. In response, a class of religious scholars, the early fuqaha, begins to emerge as an independent moral and legal authority. Centers such as Medina, Kufa, and Basra develop their own circles of jurists. They gather reports about Muhammad, the companions, and the early caliphs. They also develop local legal traditions, sometimes called “the practice of the people of Medina” or the “opinion” of the Iraqi scholars.

For these scholars, Shariah becomes a way of resisting pure political control. They hold that the caliph does not legislate in the sense of inventing law; he enforces what Allah and His Messenger have already established. In their teaching, the true authority lies in the Quran and Sunnah, not in the palace. One famous statement attributed to early scholars is that Islam is “the Book and the Sunnah,” while rulers come and go. The implication is clear: the law of Allah is above the will of any earthly leader.

The reliance on the Quran and prophetic reports continues to deepen. As hadith collections grow, scholars begin to sift them, accepting some as sound and rejecting others as weak or fabricated. Gradually, distinct regional approaches harden into schools of law, each with its own methods and preferences. The outlines of Shariah as a technical discipline are becoming visible.

Expansion and Systematization Under the Abbasids

The Abbasid revolution in 750 C.E. shifts the center of power to Baghdad and marks the beginning of the classical age of Islamic law. The new dynasty needs legitimacy. It presents itself as more pious and more devoted to the Prophet’s family than the Umayyads had been. Supporting the religious scholars and courts is one way to prove this claim.

Under the Abbasids, the great Sunni legal schools take their mature form. The Hanafi school, associated with Abu Hanifa and his disciples in Kufa, becomes influential in Iraq and later in much of the eastern Islamic world. The Maliki school, rooted in Medina and associated with Imam Malik ibn Anas, emphasizes the practice of the Medinese as a living Sunnah. The Shafi‘i school, founded by Muhammad ibn Idris al-Shafi‘i, seeks to systematize the principles of legal reasoning. The Hanbali school, linked with Ahmad ibn Hanbal, insists most strongly on sticking to scriptural texts and early reports.

Al-Shafi‘i’s work is especially important for understanding how Shariah becomes a self-conscious science. In his treatise on legal methodology, he insists that no one may declare something lawful or unlawful unless he has evidence from the Book of Allah, the Sunnah of His Messenger, the consensus of the community, or sound analogy built on those sources. He argues fiercely that authentic hadith must be obeyed just as the Quran must be obeyed, because the Prophet speaks by Allah’s permission. This reasoning cements the fourfold structure discussed in the previous chapter: Quran, Sunnah, ijma, and qiyas.

During the Abbasid period, judges are appointed throughout the empire, and the office of chief judge, the qadi al-qudat, appears in Baghdad. These qadis are expected to rule according to one of the recognized schools. Detailed legal manuals are written to guide them. Malik’s “al-Muwatta’” collects hadith and Medinese practice. Abu Yusuf and Muhammad al-Shaybani, students of Abu Hanifa, write books on taxation, war, and contracts. Later compendia arrange the rulings of each school into organized chapters on purification, prayer, fasting, almsgiving, pilgrimage, marriage, divorce, sales, crimes, and many other topics.

Shariah now furnishes a complete framework for life under Islam. In cities from North Africa to Persia, qadi courts oversee marriage contracts, divorces, custody disputes, inheritance cases, and property disagreements. Market inspectors, known as muhtasibs, enforce weights and measures and suppress public immorality. Endowments (awqaf) are created under Shariah rules to fund mosques, schools, fountains, and caravanserais. Scholars issue fatwas, legal opinions, that help ordinary people apply the law to new situations.

In theory, the caliph remains Allah’s vicegerent, charged with enforcing Shariah. In practice, rulers often act unjustly or ignore the law when it suits them. Yet even then, they feel compelled to justify their actions in Shariah language. They claim that harsh measures are necessary to prevent corruption in the land or that extraordinary circumstances require special rules. The very need to make such arguments shows how deeply the ideal of divine law has sunk into the consciousness of the civilization. A ruler who openly rejected Shariah would lose his claim to Islamic legitimacy.

Even when the empire begins to fragment and real power passes to local dynasties, Shariah remains the connective tissue. A scholar trained in one Sunni school can serve as a judge or mufti in many lands. A merchant from Damascus can marry, trade, and write contracts in Cairo or Baghdad because the same legal categories apply. Shariah has become the shared grammar of Islamic society.

Ottoman Enforcement and Global Institutionalization

The Mongol invasions and the later rise of Turkic and Mamluk powers shake the political map of the Muslim world, but they do not dislodge Shariah. By the time the Ottoman Empire emerges as the dominant Sunni power in the sixteenth century, the classical structure of Islamic law is well established. The Ottomans do not reinvent Shariah; they administer it.

The Ottoman sultans adopt the Hanafi school as the official legal rite of the empire. Qadis trained in Hanafi fiqh staff the courts from the Balkans to the Arabian Peninsula. A hierarchical judiciary links village judges to provincial courts and eventually to an imperial court in Istanbul. At the top stands the Shaykh al-Islam, the chief mufti, who issues major fatwas on matters of state and confirms the legality of sultanic policies. When a sultan wishes to undertake a controversial action—such as deposing an earlier ruler, taxing in new ways, or waging a certain war—he seeks a fatwa declaring it consistent with Shariah.

Alongside Shariah, the Ottomans develop sultanic regulations known as qanun. These deal with matters like land tenure, military organization, and administration that are not directly covered in the classical manuals. Yet rulers and jurists insist that qanun must not contradict Shariah. They present these statutes as detailed applications of general Shariah principles rather than as independent law. Even when the lines blur in practice, the theory of Shariah’s supremacy is maintained.

Non-Muslim communities under Ottoman rule are organized into millets, religious communities with a degree of internal autonomy. Christians and Jews are often allowed to handle internal family law matters according to their own traditions, but they remain under overarching Islamic sovereignty. A Muslim may always take a case to a Shariah court. In mixed disputes, Shariah rules prevail. The hierarchy is clear: at the top stands Islamic law; other systems function by tolerance, not by right.

By the nineteenth century, the Ottomans face increasing pressure from European powers and internal reform movements. Western-style legal codes are introduced in commercial and criminal matters. Yet even these reforms show the imprint of Shariah. The “Majalla,” an Ottoman civil code, is explicitly based on Hanafi legal principles. Rather than abandoning Shariah, it translates parts of it into a modern code format.

When the Ottoman caliphate is abolished in 1924, many Muslims experience the event as a deep wound. For centuries, however imperfectly, the empire had symbolized the unity of the ummah and the public enforcement of Shariah. Its collapse opens the door to secular nationalist regimes and Western codes across much of the Muslim world. At the same time, it sets the stage for new movements determined to restore Shariah’s central place.

Modern Revival Movements: Wahhabism, Muslim Brotherhood, and Contemporary States

Even before the fall of the Ottomans, a revivalist movement had arisen in the Arabian Peninsula that would shape the Shariah landscape of the modern era. In the eighteenth century, Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, a scholar from Najd, called for a return to what he saw as the pure monotheism of the early Muslims. He denounced practices he labeled shirk, such as seeking the intercession of saints at tombs or swearing oaths by other than Allah. He insisted that the Quran and Sunnah, as understood by the earliest generations, must govern belief and practice.

Wahhab’s alliance with the house of Saud created a political-religious partnership: the Al Saud would rule, and Wahhabi scholars would define and enforce doctrine and law. In the territories they controlled, strict Hanbali interpretations of Shariah were implemented. Punishments such as stoning for adultery, amputation for theft, and public floggings were carried out. Non-Wahhabi expressions of Islam, especially Sufi traditions, were suppressed. When the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia eventually emerged, it inherited this religious framework. Its basic law describes the Quran and Sunnah as the constitution of the state. Courts apply Hanbali fiqh. Modern ministries and bureaucracies exist, but they operate under an explicit Shariah umbrella.

In the wider Muslim world, European colonialism and the adoption of Western legal codes generated a different kind of response. After the Ottoman collapse, many new states imported civil and criminal codes from France, Italy, or Britain. In some places, Shariah was restricted to family law; in others, it was sidelined almost entirely. For devout Muslims shaped by classical teaching, this looked like rebellion against Allah’s law.

In 1928, Hasan al-Banna founded the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. His slogan captured the movement’s vision: “Islam is creed and worship, homeland and nation, religion and state, spirit and body, book and sword.” For the Brotherhood, Shariah is not a marginal concern. It is the comprehensive system Allah intends for all areas of life. Al-Banna called for reforming individuals, families, and society in line with Shariah and ultimately establishing governments that would implement it fully.

Later Brotherhood thinkers such as Sayyid Qutb sharpened this message. Qutb described societies that do not rule by what Allah has revealed as living in jahiliyyah, a state of pre-Islamic ignorance. He wrote that Shariah is “a complete system for all aspects of human life,” covering belief, worship, morality, law, economy, and politics. Only when Shariah rules, he argued, is true freedom possible, because only then are people liberated from servitude to other humans and placed under the servitude of Allah alone. These ideas inspired Islamist movements far beyond Egypt.

In South Asia, Abul A‘la Mawdudi developed a similar vision. He spoke of establishing an “Islamic state” in which sovereignty belongs to Allah, not the people. The role of the community is to discover and implement Allah’s law, not to legislate according to its own desires. He described this system as a kind of “theo-democracy,” but its core is clear: Shariah stands above human will.

Throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, various states and movements have attempted, in different ways, to bring Shariah back to the center of public life. Pakistan introduced hudud ordinances inspired by classical punishments. Iran, though Shi‘a rather than Sunni, instituted a constitution that places Islamic jurists at the top of the political system and requires laws to conform to Shariah as interpreted by them. Afghanistan under the Taliban and regions of northern Nigeria under local Shariah statutes applied corporal punishments and severe moral policing. Groups like al-Qaeda and the so-called Islamic State took the demand for Shariah to violent extremes, openly proclaiming their goal of establishing rule by Allah’s law and enforcing it through jihad.

Even in more “moderate” contexts, constitutions often declare Islam the religion of the state and Shariah a principal or the principal source of legislation. Family law in many Muslim-majority countries continues to follow classical rules on marriage, divorce, custody, and inheritance. Modern parliaments and courts exist, but they frequently operate within a framework that acknowledges Shariah’s theoretical supremacy, even if practice is inconsistent.

All of this shows that Shariah did not remain a set of private religious ideals. From Muhammad’s earliest rulings in Medina, through the codification efforts of the Rashidun and Umayyads, the great systematization under the Abbasids, the Ottoman institutional network of courts and muftis, and the modern revivalist movements that seek to restore or expand its place, Shariah has been understood as the God-given law to which Islamic civilization ought to conform. Whether enforced strictly or partially, whether expanded by conquest or advanced by political activism, the same core claim persists: Allah has revealed a final legal and theological system, and it should govern the earth.

For Christians committed to the inspired, inerrant Word of Jehovah, this history cannot be ignored. Shariah is not a marginal option for a few extremists; it is the historical norm for Islamic civilization and the declared goal of many of its most influential movements. The chapters that follow will examine in detail what that system demands in specific areas of life, especially for those who are often least protected when divine law, as Islam understands it, takes control.

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