How does the Islamic religion influence Islamic law - Essay Example

From the birth to the death, the Muslims across the globe hear the holy sounds of Quran. The holy Quran is regarded as the guide for the lives of all the Muslims across the globe. All Islamic principles and ethics are embedded in it. The finer aspects of Islam and the Islamic Law are ingrained in the holy Quran. The spread of the Islam in this world has been phenomenal. Starting from the cities of the Makkah and Madinah in the Arabian world, the message of the Islam spread at lightning speed.

Within 100 years since the death of the Prophet Mohamed, the messages of Islam spread to three continents of the world. In the Western world, the ordinary believe is that that region of Islam has spread at electrifying pace through bloody wars. But this is not true. The sheer appeal of the new Islam religion enticed people to believe in Islamism. The unflinching belief in the existence of One God and the strong emphasis and trust upon His divinity led to large numbers of people embracing Islam.

Another important feature of the Islam was that it never adopted the policy to forcefully covert people to Islamism. Even in the modern times, in many Muslim dominated areas in the world, the people of other religions like the Jews and the Christians continued to follow their own religious ideologies.2. Whatsoever, the Islams spread at a rapid pace. The Turks accepted Islamism peacefully. Besides this, many Malay-speaking people and many people in the Indian subcontinent embraced Islamism. Even in many countries in the African and the South American continent, which were under the powerful colonial rulers of the Europe, the Islamism continued to flourish3.

It is estimated that the Muslim population throughout the world is in the range 0.7 to 1.8 billion. Nearly one-fourth of the people in the world are adherents of Islam whereas 33% of the world population follows Christianity—by far the largest religion in the world. Given the rising number of followers of Islam, it is estimated that Muslim will be the largest religion in the world by the middle of the twenty first century4. Indonesia, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and Nigeria are the most populous Muslim nations.

Of the total Muslims in the world, 25% live in the Middle East. In the US, around 6 million people are Muslims5. Living in a multicultural society brings together people from all religious practices, cultures and religions. The impact of law is seen by the different behaviors of people and the consequences they face for their actions. For instance the controversies surrounding headscarves worn by students in Turkish educational institutions and death sentence imparted to women owing to illegal sexual liaisons raise questions in our mind with respect to the origin of such measures or consequences.

For the Islamic countries adherence to the Islamic law is important for the social progress in these nations. The administrations are compelled to encounter a disaster of identity and finds its political legitimacy challenged such that they will have to alter the principles and the legal structure within the Islamic frame6. The government feels the pressure of incorporating tenets of the Islamic law into the system and therefore some Muslims recommend the realization of the Sharia or the “Islamization of prevalent law”.

The term ‘sharia’ is an Arabic phrase for ‘track’ or ‘road’. “The term itself actually derives from the noun ‘shara’a’, which reflects the idea of ‘a system of divine law’”7. Susie Steiner (2002), the author of the article ‘