God Arises
Religion and Society
~ 400 ~
In ancient times, religion had a major role to play in
the framing and enactment of laws. On this, the
legal historian, Sir Henry Maine, has this to say.
“From China to Peru, we can find no written
constitutional system of government that was not,
from its very inception, tied up with religious
rituals and devotion.”
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In the face of the vacillations of philosophers, legal
experts and psychologists, modern jurists having
stated quite finally that “a purely logical
interpretation of legal rules is impossible,” we must
necessarily turn to the precision, stability and
universality of revealed law. This had been
perfectly preserved in its original authentic form in
the Quran, the holy book of Islam, which asserts
that revelation from God is the only true source of
law. It clearly states that there is a God of this
universe, who has revealed His law to His
messenger. This law is the most correct set of laws
for man, on the basis of which further laws can be
formed by
Qiyas
, i.e. the analogical reasoning of the
learned based on the teachings of the Quran,
Hadith
and
Ijma
(the unanimous consent of a council of
divines) and by
Ijtihad
,
i.e. by logical deduction on a
