Sharia and Fiqh Explained

According to classical Muslims, the word of God is law and law is the command of God. This law is known as Sharia. Thus Sharia is the divine law encoded in the Quran. The divine laws had been given by God to help man overcome the physical and human challenges of a particular environment. Quran constitutes the things for understanding the commands of God for a given time-place situation as being a legal Muslim is meaningless if one is not a real Muslim at the same time. Thus the Sharia is the pure and complete guidance for human behavior. There were different human interpretations and understandings of divine ways by various schools of Islamic law. These interpretations were inevitable in the dynamic physical and human environment. Although these interpretations are not Sharia; thus Sharia is different from the interpretation of it, Fiqh, and statutes. 

The literal meaning of Sharia is ‘way’, ‘path towards water source’; thus, it means the way to be followed by disciples within which the public and personal affairs are regulated according to the command of God. In general, Sharia refers to Islamic law which includes the totality of god’s command as a matter of conduct, belief, and ethics, and in a narrower sense, it includes matters of conduct. Sharia comprised the Quran and Sunna Prophet Muhammad. Fiqh or Islamic law is only a part of Sharia.

The fundamentals of personal social law are given in the Quran to cover all possible contingencies to solve every problem according to the Quran’s instructions. To understand the detailed instruction of God for contemporary conditions from the broad outlines in the Quran, the percepts, practices, and precedents of God’s messenger, Muhammad, for both Mecca-type and Medina-type conditions, personal, political, economic, social and diplomatic; From these; subsequent generations have built up systematic understandings of the commands of God with developed methodologies. Fiqh implies this knowledge and understanding.

The literal meaning of fiqh is knowledge and understanding or deep knowledge. It is the human understanding of the divine law or Sharia. It is the science that developed the rules from the sources of Sharia. It is Islamic jurisprudence or science of Islamic law. Again some jurists defined fiqh in a wider sense including all three aspects of conduct, belief, and ethics, and others in a narrower sense confined to matters of conduct.