Education about the Role of Human Agency in the Development of Islamic Law

First, the Muslim community needs to be educated on the distinction between Shari’ah and many of the technical legal rules derived from the Qur’an and sunnah through Usul al-fiqh.^[860] A faqih,^[861] or jurist, derived these rules and thus the decision is not eternal and is open to reinter­pretation in light of, inter alia, new social, economic, educational and political circumstances.^[862] Too many Muslims are under the false pre­tence that fiqhi positions and views are the divine word of God.

This fact, combined with the evolutionary and dynamic nature of Islamic jurisprudence, provides much hope in rethinking fiqh broadly, and more specifically for our purposes in the context of blasphemy and apostasy. Indeed, even a cursory examination of the ways in which classical fiqh works from any of the jurisprudential schools will reveal how the exigencies of political, social, economic and theological contro­versies that arose over the course of Islamic history factored into their rulings. As a result, while the Qur’an clearly implies the right to entertain such religious beliefs as one chooses, juristic opinion (fiqh) severely restricted the scope of religious freedom and expression.^[863]

Until the Muslim masses striving to establish Islam distinguish between the eternal universal message of the Qur’an and the juristic attempts to articulate this, the world will continue to witness calls to return to rules of a bygone era, devoid of its context and spirit.

B.