What is Shariat, Historically?

I would like to begin with the meaning of the term Shariat.

According to the All-India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB):

Qanun-e-Shariat is a collection of rules and norms that have been codified following the intentions and consent of almighty Allah (as expressed in the holy Quran) for making human life meaningful, peaceful, and success­ful.

This meaning of Shariat has three interesting aspects. (a) The Quran is the fun­damental source, which cannot be changed and which is relevant for all human societies. Since, the guidance/legal indications given in the Quran are not entirely spelt out, the legality of Quran verses is subject to certain controlled elaborations. (b) The Sunna or the life of the prophet is an important reference point in this regard, because his life history embodies the legal indications of the Quran. (c) The fuqha or the ulema class is entitled to reinterpret the Quran — partly because the existence of this class is recognised by Allah in the Quran and partly because this class continues to adhere to the originality and authenticity of the true mes­sage of the Quran/Prophet.

The third aspect of this officially sacred interpretation of Shariat requires a criti­cal elaboration because it touches upon one of the most sensitive religious issue of Islamic faith: the possibilities of human intervention in the divine words of Allah. According to AIMPLB, the intervention of the fuqha class is legitimate because the ulema’s commitment and trustworthiness towards the authenticity of the Quran and Sunna is unquestionable.⁴ This rather provocative elucidation raises a few relevant issues: what is the originality of the Quran/Sunna? Is this originality self-evident? If yes, why do we need an ‘interpretation’?

It is believed that the Quran is a divine text, which was revealed to Prophet Muhammad through jibreel (Gabriel) — the Angel of revelation. In order to under­line the sacred significance of this book ofAllah, it is argued that the Quran is the only religious book in the world that has never been distorted, changed, altered or even misrepresented.⁵ In fact, it is asserted that Allah protects the sanctity of the Quran through those believers who memorize it. These believers, who are known as Hafiz, recite the Quran, especially in the month of Ramadan to spread the divine message to the community.⁶

It will be useful to address such claims historically. If we look at the had­ith literature, we find that the compilation of the Quran has a very interesting story. The Quran, during the time of the Prophet, was not available in a form of a book. The prophet’s companions used to memorize the revelations word- by-word.⁷ The five-time prayers (salat or namaz) were the main ritual in early Islamic society for the recitation of these words. However, after the death of the Prophet, attempts were made to bring together these ‘sacred’ words so that a basic text of Islam based on God’s revelations could be prepared. The first three caliphs of Islam gave special priority to this rather formidable task. Accordingly, 114 chapters or Sura of the Quran were arranged and the principles of recitation of this text were clearly laid down.

This compilation of the Quran, over the course of time, transformed it into a relic.⁹ Its ‘authenticity’, the words of the revelation as well the order of the verses given to it by the early Islamic religious-political elite, consequently, emerged as the most essential commemorative value. The religious elite of the subsequent generations evoked this commemorative value, especially in terms of authentic­ity, to produce various interpretations of the Quran. The rise of Tafsir-ul-Quran (explanation of Quran) literature in early Islamic history is a revealing example in this regard.¹⁰

One may argue, and in my view quite legitimately, that this story of the Quran can also be employed by the ulema class to prove its historical claim as the legitimate compiler/editor of the holy book. However, this self-portrayal, by implication, goes against the claim that ulema have been following the ‘original’/ authentic religious texts (the Quran and Hadith). In fact, what is presented as the original in the name of authenticity is nothing but a product of human interven­tion-organisation, compilation, and interpretation!

AIMPLB, however, offers us another more context-oriented historical account. We are told:

After the demise of Muslim rule in India, efforts had been made for the protection of Muslim personal laws in India. The Shariat Application Act 1937 was the obvious outcome of this endeavor.¹¹

This passing reference to Muslim rule in India is very crucial not merely to deconstruct the linear genealogy of the ulema class but also to underline the grad­ual evolution of the modern notion of Shariat.

The recent works on Indian Islam, particularly the writings of Muzaffar Alam,¹² Raziuddin Aqil,¹³ Sunil Kumar¹⁴ and Richard Eaton,¹⁵ problematise the given historical imaginations of Muslim rule in medieval India.

Richard Eaton and Philip B Wagoner’s book Power, Memory, Architecture (2014) is very relevant here. This study makes a powerful claim that pre-British Indian history cannot be studied simply by employing Hindus/Muslims or for that mat­ter Shariat as explanatory categories. Eaton and Wagoner look at the intellec­tual universes of the Sanskrit and Persian literary traditions and their subsequent reception in the political discourse. Evoking Sheldon Pollack’s notion of lan­guage ‘cosmopolis’, they suggest: ‘what seems to be operating are two models of cosmopolitan culture which, while certainly in dialogue with religious systems, embraced a far wider spectrum of culture than religion alone’.¹⁶ This reinterpreta­tion of religion/language tradition relationship gives us a much refined explana­tion of the placing of Shariat in the political discourse of medieval Muslim rulers.

Muzaffar Alam offers us a more direct response to the historical claims made by the AIMPLB. Alam talks about a body of Akhlaq literature that turned out to be a major source of the political norms in Mughal India. He argues, ‘the fact that the Mughals’ claim to rulership did not emanate from their religious position also reinforced this variety of non-juristic articulation of power and its enforcement... there is in fact little juristic discussion around the validity or invalidity of... matrimonial alliances of Mughals with local Hindu Rajputs, or Akbar’s decisions to abolish the jiziya and pilgrimage taxes on non-Muslims. True, Aurangzeb extended the patronage to the compilation of Fatwa-e-Alamgiri, but again there is no evidence of this ever being put into practice’.¹⁷

On the basis of these historical explanations two crucial inferences can be made.

Let us elaborate this point. The British colonial regime (especially the Company rule) had a very different imagination of Indian communities and their laws. The Company officials were keen to understand community-based laws for enhancing their knowledge of the local revenue system. This objective led to a search for India’s past — its history, culture and above all community-based laws. According to Ranajit Guha the early histories of India from the British point of view were written in a period of 30 years (between the Diwani and Permanent Settlement). Guha traces three types of narratives in this period. (a) The com­prehensive surveys of India’s past covering a long period of time exploring the relationship between power and property for answering the question, who owned the land? (b) The comprehensive surveys covered the whole subcontinent and again explored the relationship between political power and landed classes but in a different manner. The question for such a narrative is: how much wealth did the land produce and how it was shared? (c) The local histories were written by the local officials for identifying the relationship between power and property at the local level. These early histories were simply responding to the political needs of the early colonial rule. These histories relied extensively on Indian literature, particularly the religious sources.¹⁸

The consolidation of the Company rule in the 18th century paved the way for a very typical system of legal administration: the civil and criminal courts were set up and the community-based norms were accepted for dealing with civil disputes.¹⁹ This legal schema not only envisaged religious texts — the Quran and Dharmshastr — as main sources of Hindu and Muslim laws respectively but also recognised the authority of Maulavis and Pandits as true and legitimate interpret­ers of religion.

Two very significant 19th century developments are important to understand this historical context. The translation of the Quran (in Persian and later in Urdu) and circulation of the Tafseer literature established a clear distinction between Shariat-based ideal Islam and the customary practices associated with various Muslim communities. The Muslim reformers, particularly the ulema, constructed a highly idealised picture of classical Islam and started marking the actual cultural practices as un-Islamic. In fact, the term gair-Sharai (non-Islamic) was established as an explanatory category in religious texts. Since the Shariat-based Islam had already been recognised by the colonial state, the customary practices lost their potential as a source of law.²⁰ The Wakf al-ulaulad Act 1913 and the Muslim Personal Law Shariat Application Act, 1937, in this sense, evolved out of this legal schema. The struggles of the ulema, which AIMPLB’s version of history talks about, also revolved around the protection of the various versions of this Shariat­based ideal Islam.

III.