RELIGION AND SOCIETY

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.”5 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