Sharia Crossword Puzzle for Kids

Sharia, Sharia law or Islamic law is a set of religious principles which form part of the Muslim faith. The Arabic word sharīʿah refers to the revealed law of God and originally meant "way" or "path".

Classical sharia deals with many aspects of public and private life, including religious rituals, family life, business, crimes, and warfare. In former times, sharia was interpreted by independent jurists, who based their legal opinions on Qur'an, Hadith, centuries of debate, interpretation and precedent. Some parts of sharia can be described as "law" in the usual sense of that word, while other parts are better understood as rules for living life in accordance with God's will.

Countries in the Muslim world all have their own laws. In most of them only a small part of the legal system is based on classical sharia. Muslims disagree on how sharia should be applied.

Some of the practices of Sharia have been deemed evil and incompatible with human rights, gender equality and freedom of speech and expression.

Meaning and origins

People of different religions who speak Arabic use the word sharīʿah to describe a religious tradition that comes from teachings of prophets. Christians and Jews in the Middle East have used it to describe their own religion. For many Muslims the word "sharia" means simply "justice". They will say that any law agrees with sharia as long as it helps to build a more fair and prosperous society.

Most Muslims believe sharia should be interpreted by experts in Islamic law. In Arabic, the word sharīʿah refers to God's revelation, which does not change. In contrast, the rules of behavior created by scholars as they try to understand God's revelation are called fiqh. These rules can change and Islamic scholars have often disagreed about them.

Scholars disagree about the origins of the word "sharia". Some say that "sharia" comes from the old Arabic word meaning "pathway to be followed". This would make it similar to halakha (the way to go), the Hebrew word for Jewish law. Other scholars think that the word "sharia" originally meant "path to the water hole". They say that knowing the way to a water hole could save a man's life in the deserts of Arabia, and that is why this word came to refer to God's guidance to man.

Theory

Islamic scholars who lived during the first centuries of Islam developed different methods for interpreting sharia. Most of them came to agree that sharia rules should be derived from the following main sources:

The Qur'an, which Muslims believe was revealed by God to Muhammad through the angel Gabriel (Jibril).

The actions and words of Muhammad, which are called the sunnah and were preserved in collections called hadith

The process of deriving sharia rules from the Qur'an and hadith is called ijtihad. Sharia rules classify actions into one of the following categories:

These acts have "material or moral" provisions in the understanding of Sharia. The abandonment of the actions "that are considered fard, wajib and sunnah", and doing the forbidden ones "that are considered makruh and haram" are penalized. (hadd or tazir punishments). E.g.; Beating, imprisoning and killing those who insist on not praying can be considered in this context.

Branches of sharia

The divisions of sharia are called "branches" (furu) in Arabic. The main branches are ibadat (rituals or acts of worship) and mu'amalat (human interactions or social relations). These branches are divided into many smaller branches, some of which are listed bellow:

The acts of worship, or al-ibadat, called the 5 pillars of Islam: affirmation of faith, prayer, fasting, charity, and pilgrimage

Affirmation (Shahadah): There is no God except Allah and Muhammad is his messenger.

There are some special recommended acts used during these holidays:

Takbirs (glorifying God) after every prayer in the days of Tashriq (see footnote for def.)

Crime and punishment

Offenses mentioned in the Quran (hudud) that are viewed as violating "claims of God" and have fixed punishments.

Offenses against people (murder and wounding) which call for a punishment similar to the crime, (qisas) such as; murdering or cutting off limbs of the offender.

Other forbidden behavior where a Muslim judge uses his discretion in sentencing (ta'zir and siyasa)

Although there is some disagreement about which crimes are hudud crimes, they usually include theft, highway robbery, zina (sex with forbidden partners/adultery), falsely accusing someone of zina, and drinking alcohol. The prescribed punishments for these crimes range from 80 lashes to death. However, classical jurists developed very strict rules which restrict when these punishments could be applied, so that in many cases it became almost impossible to convict anyone under these rules. For example, there must be four adult Muslim witnesses to a hudud crime or a confession repeated four times, before someone can be punished. If a criminal could not be convicted of a hudud crime, they could still receive a tazir punishment.

In the historical practice, qisas appears in two ways. One of them is the punishment of the perpetrator with a “counter-action”, exactly the same as the crime committed, in crimes against the person's bodily integrity; A life for a life, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth... etc.

Legal system

During the Islamic Golden Age, sharia was interpreted by experts in Islamic law (muftis), most of whom were independent religious scholars. Anyone could ask them a question about law, and they were expected to give an answer for free. Their legal opinions were called fatwas.

When there was a legal dispute about family or financial matters, it would be handled in a court headed by a qadi (judge). These judges also had a legal education, and they were appointed to their post by the ruler. In simple cases, qadis would pronounce a verdict based on their own knowledge of sharia. In more difficult cases, they would express the details of the case in general terms and ask a mufti for his legal opinion.

Criminal cases were usually handled in maẓālim courts. These courts were controlled by the ruler's council. Mazalim courts were supposed to follow "the spirit of sharia". Qadis and muftis were present in those courts to make sure the verdicts did not go against it. However, these courts did not necessarily follow the letter of the law, and they had fewer legal restrictions than qadi's courts. Mazalim courts also handled complaints against government officials. Their purpose of mazalim courts was to "right wrongs" which could not be addressed through procedures of qadi's courts. Less serious crimes were often handled by local police and market inspectors according to local customs, which were only loosely related to sharia.

Non-Muslim communities living under Islamic rule were allowed to follow their own laws. The government kept out of their internal legal affairs, except when there was a dispute between people of different religions. Such cases were handled by a qadi. When that happened, sharia rules gave Muslims some legal advantages over non-Muslims. However, Non-Muslims often won cases against Muslims and even against high government officials, because people thought that sharia was a reflection of divine justice which should defend the weak against the powerful.

Sharia in the modern world

In the modern era, most parts of the Muslim world came under influence or control of European powers. This led to major changes in the legal systems of these lands. In some cases, this was because Muslim governments wanted to make their states more powerful and they took European states as models of what a modern state should look like. In other cases, it was because Europeans who colonized these lands forced them to abandon parts of Islamic law and follow European laws instead.

In modern times, criminal laws in the Muslim world were widely replaced by codes which were inspired by European laws. Court procedures and legal education were also made similar to European practice. The constitutions of most Muslim-majority states mention sharia in one way or another. However, the classical rules of sharia were preserved mostly in family laws. In earlier times, sharia was interpreted by independent scholars who often disagreed with each other, and all their opinions were never written down in one place. In the modern era, it was the government who controlled the laws. Different states created their own legal codes, where the laws were clearly stated. The governments wanted to make family laws fit better in the modern world, but they still wanted people to view them as laws based on sharia. In order to do this, the scholars who wrote down these laws decided to pick and choose rules from the different legal opinions available in the classical books of law. When some of the laws they picked disagreed with the current norms of society, the government tried to solve this problem by creating additional court procedures. For example, when family laws in some states seemed to treat women unfairly to the population, the government created procedures that made it more difficult for men to take advantage of these laws in an unfair manner.

In the last quarter of the 20th century, many Muslims around the world became disappointed in their governments. These governments had adopted Western ways in their legal systems and other matters, but many people regarded their actions as oppressive, corrupt, and ineffective. More and more Muslims started to think that things would improve if their government returned to Islamic traditions. They began calling for return of sharia, and conservative members of the public wanted the government to deal with crime using all the traditional methods, including hudud punishments. In a few countries, the government put some elements of classical criminal law into the legal code. However, in some of these countries (for example, Iran and Sudan) the supreme court has rarely approved the harsher hudud punishments, while in the other countries which adopted hudud laws (for example, Pakistan and Nigeria), the supreme court never approves them.

In some countries, progressive Muslim reformers have been able to change how the state interprets sharia family laws to make them more fair to women.

Saudi Arabia is an exceptional case in the legal history of the Muslim world. It has always continued to use sharia in different areas of law, and it never codified its laws. Its judges have always tried to follow traditional sharia rules for dealing with crimes, and they often impose harsh punishments that inspire international protests. However, these punishments are not necessarily prescribed by sharia. Judges in Saudi Arabia follow the classical principle which says that hudud punishments should be avoided if at all possible, and the punishments which they apply are usually tazir punishments which are left to their own choice. Saudi Arabia is often criticized for its public executions, and their frequency has increased in recent decades. Executions became more frequent because the government and courts decided to crack down on violent crime which became more frequent during the 1970s, as also happened in the U.S. and China.

Support and opposition

A 2013 survey based on interviews of 38,000 Muslims, randomly selected from urban and rural parts in 39 countries using statictical designs, by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life found that a majority—in some cases "overwhelming" majority—of Muslims in a number of countries support making "Sharia" or "Islamic law" the law of the land, including Afghanistan (99%), Iraq (91%), Niger (86%), Malaysia (86%), Pakistan (84%), Morocco (83%), Bangladesh (82%), Egypt (74%), Indonesia (72%), Jordan (71%), Uganda (66%), Ethiopia (65%), Mali (63%), Ghana (58%), and Tunisia (56%). In Muslim regions of Southern-Eastern Europe and Central Asia, the support is less than 50%: Russia (42%), Kyrgyzstan (35%), Tajikistan (27%), Kosovo (20%), Albania (12%), Turkey (12%), Kazakhstan (10%), Azerbaijan (8%). Regional averages of support were 84% in South Asia, 77% in Southeast Asia, 74% in the Middle-East/North Africa, 64%, in Sub-Saharan Africa, 18% in Southern-Eastern Europe, and 12% in Central Asia.

However, while most of those who support implementation of Sharia favor using it in family and property disputes, fewer supported application of severe punishments such as whippings and cutting off hands, and interpretations of some aspects differed widely. According to the Pew poll, among Muslims who support making Sharia the law of the land, most do not believe that it should be applied to non-Muslims. In the Muslim-majority countries surveyed this proportion varied between 74% (of 74% in Egypt) and 19% (of 10% in Kazakhstan), as percentage of those who favored making Sharia the law of the land.

In all of the countries surveyed, respondents were more likely to define Sharia as "the revealed word of God" rather than as "a body of law developed by men based on the word of God". In analyzing the poll, Amaney Jamal has argued that there is no single, shared understanding of the ideas "Sharia" and "Islamic law" among the respondents. In particular, in countries where Muslim citizens have little experience with rigid application of Sharia-based state laws, these ideas tend to be more associated with Islamic ideals like equality and social justice than with forbidden acts Other polls have indicated that for Egyptians, the word "Sharia" is associated with ideas of political, social and gender justice.

In 2008, Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, has suggested that Islamic and Orthodox Jewish courts should be integrated into the British legal system alongside church courts to handle marriage and divorce, subject to agreement of all parties and strict requirements for protection of equal rights for women. His reference to the sharia sparked a controversy. Later that year, Nicholas Phillips, then Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales, stated that there was "no reason why sharia principles [...] should not be the basis for mediation or other forms of alternative dispute resolution." A 2008 YouGov poll in the United Kingdom found 40% of Muslim students interviewed supported the introduction of sharia into British law for Muslims. Michael Broyde, professor of law at Emory University specializing in alternative dispute resolution and Jewish law, has argued that sharia courts can be joined into the American religious arbitration system, provided that they adopt appropriate institutional requirements as American rabbinical courts have done.

In the Western world, Sharia has been called a source of "hysteria", "more controversial than ever", the one aspect of Islam that inspires "particular dread". On the Internet, "dozens of self-styled counter-jihadis" emerged to campaign against Sharia law, describing it in strict interpretations resembling those of Salafi Muslims. Also, fear of Sharia law and of the ideology of extremism among Muslims as well as certain congregations donating money to terrorist organizations within the Muslim community reportedly spread to mainstream conservative Republicans in the United States. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich won ovations calling for a federal ban on Sharia law.

Text adapted from the Simple English Wikipedia article “Sharia” (revision 10864424, 2026-05-21), authors, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.