9781422281116

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I SLAMISM & F UNDAMENTALISM IN THE M ODERN W ORLD

Sharia. Through the centuries, most Muslims have viewed the Sharia not as a code of fixed rules that govern behavior, but rather as the path toward knowledge of God’s will and the way to achieve God’s justice on earth. The Sharia includes not only rules, but also the methods of interpretation judges use to determine those rules; throughout the Islamic world, judges deal with impor- tant issues in local Muslim communities and develop interpreta- tions based on the Qur’an and the example of the prophet Muhammad relevant to the context. The Sharia is not a codified, fixed set of laws enforced by a central government. However, with the advent of the nation-state and colonialism—together with the idea of a standard, fixed law written for an entire country—some Muslims’ ideas about the Sharia also changed. Many fundamen- talists came to view the Sharia as a fixed set of laws that should uniformly govern an entire nation. The Sharia as a fixed entity then increasingly took on a symbolic role as fundamentalists sought to build support against Western cultural and political con- trol in Muslim countries.

Because Muslims believe the Qur’an records the exact words of God, great emphasis is placed on studying, memorizing, and reciting the holy book in the classical Arabic in which it was originally revealed to the prophet Muhammad. That language can be difficult to master, even for native speakers of modern Arabic. Shown here is a Qur’an student in Djenné, a town in the West African country of Mali.