The Shariah and its Application

THE SHARIAH AND ITS APPLICATION This shows that at times defense is required to deal with persecution. Whereas at other times no counter move is desirable except for patience. Now the question arises as to how to find out in which circumstance the way of patience and tolerance has to be adopted and in which circumstance doing battle in self-defense is to be resorted to. The believers of the first phase did not need to take any decision regarding the answer to these questions. For the answers according to the prevailing state of affairs continued to be revealed by God. But this situation no longer prevailed for later-day Muslims. For them, the questions exist in relation to the circumstances, but the answers have to be found by their own questing. Herein lies the test of the believers of later times. If the test of the people of the Prophet’s day consisted of recognizing the Prophet, the test of the latter-day Muslims lies in recognizing the command of the Prophet. The Quran enshrines verses on both kinds of injunctions together in the same volume. Now it is the responsibility of the believers themselves to reflect deeply, objectively, without any bias, to find which of the commands is to be applied to any given situation and which of the commands is to be considered abrogated for the time being. This nature of the command was earlier determined directly by revelation, while now this has to be determined by the exercise of ijtihad. Let’s take up another aspect of this subject. The idolaters were there in Makkah when the Prophet and his companions lived in the city, and it was the same idolaters who lived in Makkah after the migration of the Prophet up until the conquest of Madinah.