Application of Sharia by country
[2][4] The Islamic revival of the late 20th century brought along calls by Islamist movements for full implementation of Sharia, including hudud capital punishments, such as stoning, which in some cases resulted in traditionalist legal reform.
[5] Traditional theory of Islamic jurisprudence recognizes four sources of Sharia: the Quran, sunnah (authentic hadith), qiyas (analogical reasoning), and ijma (juridical consensus).
[6] Different legal schools—of which the most prominent are Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi'i, Hanbali and Jafari (Shia)—developed methodologies for deriving Sharia rulings from scriptural sources.
[7][2] Traditional jurisprudence (fiqh) distinguishes two principal branches of law, ʿibādāt (rituals) and muʿāmalāt (social relations), which together comprise a wide range of topics.
[7][8] Thus, some areas of Sharia overlap with the Western notion of law while others correspond more broadly to living life in accordance with God's will.
[2] Classical jurisprudence was elaborated by private religious scholars, largely through legal opinions (fatwas) issued by qualified jurists (muftis).
[2] Over the centuries, Sunni muftis were gradually incorporated into state bureaucracies,[10] and fiqh was complemented by various economic, criminal and administrative laws issued by Muslim rulers.
[2][4] The Islamic revival of the late 20th century brought along calls by Islamist movements for full implementation of Sharia, including hudud capital punishments, such as stoning.
[2][4][12] While hudud punishments hold symbolic importance for their proponents and have attracted international attention, in countries where they make part of the legal system, they have been used infrequently or not at all, and their application has varied depending on local political climate.
[21] Under this system, shared by a small minority of modern countries, classical Sharia is formally equated with national law and to a great extent provides its substance.
The state has a ruler who functions as the highest judiciary and may promulgate and modify laws in some legal domains, but traditional religious scholars (ulama) play a decisive role in interpreting Sharia.
[2][8] The same constitutions usually also refer to universal principles such as democracy and human rights, leaving it up to legislators and the judiciary to work out how these norms are to be reconciled in practice.
[8] Nisrine Abiad identifies Bahrain, Iran, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia as states with "strong constitutional consequences" of Sharia "on the organization and functioning of power".
These laws generally reflect influence of various modern-era reforms and tend to be characterized by ambiguity, with traditional and modernist interpretations often manifesting themselves in the same country, both in legislation and court decisions.
Laws in the Indonesian province of Aceh provide for application of discretionary (ta'zir) punishments for violation of Islamic norms, but explicitly exclude hudud and qisas.
[30] According to the U.S. State Department, the Sharia-derived family code treats women as minors under the legal guardianship of a husband or male relative, though in practice the implied restrictions are not uniformly enforced.
[32] The Family Code is mainly derived from Sharia and regulates personal status matters such as marriage, divorce, child custody and inheritance.
[65] The twelve Sharia states are Zamfara, Bauchi, Borno, Gombe, Jigawa, Kaduna, Kano, Katsina, Kebbi, Niger, Sokoto and Yobe.
[77] In 2005, Sudan adopted an interim national constitution; it removed some references to Sharia, but included Sharia-derived criminal, civil and personal legal codes, as well as Sharia-mandated hudud punishments.
[78] The Criminal Act of 1991 prescribes punishments which include forty lashes for drinking alcohol, amputation of the right hand for theft of a certain value and stoning for adultery.
[105] A new penal code enacted in May 2014 prescribes Sharia punishments, including the severing of limbs for property crimes and death by stoning for adultery and homosexuality.
[108][109] In other parts of Indonesia, religious courts have jurisdiction over civil cases between Muslim spouses on matters concerning marriage, divorce, reconciliation, and alimony.
[111][112] Article 167 of the constitution states that all judicial rulings must be based upon "authoritative Islamic sources and authentic fatwa" by the Twelver Ja'afari school of jurisprudence.
[116] The 1958 Code "made polygamy extremely difficult, granted child custody to the mother in case of divorce, [and] prohibited repudiation and marriage under the age of 16.
[119][120] Article 41 of the constitution allows for personal status matters (such as marriage, divorce and inheritance) to be governed by the rules of each religious group.
[136][137][138] The Sharia courts in Malaysia also enforces some limited amount of Islamic criminal law only applicable for Muslims, the maximum sentence for these are 6 strokes of the cane, a fine of RM 5,000, and 3 years in prison as stipulated in Act 355.
The federal law minister stated: "the government does not challenge the contention that interest is against the Quran, but the system is so deeply entrenched that it cannot be eliminated overnight.
11 of 2004 (Penal Code) allows for the application of "Sharia provisions" for the crimes of theft, adultery, defamation, drinking alcohol and apostasy if either the suspect or the victim is a Muslim.
[209] Article 263 of the 1994 penal code states that "the adulterer and adulteress without suspicion or coercion are punished with whipping by one hundred strokes as a penalty if not married.
The Sharia Courts operate under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Justice and adjudicate matters relating to marriages, divorce, financial maintenance, legal capacity and guardianship, custody of children, paternity, prevention of domestic violence, conversion to Islam, and inheritance, among others.
