The Shariah and Its Application

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 later-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. But the policy for dealing with them changed in the second of these two phases. History shows that the command given in regard to these idolaters in the first phase was simply to warn them by adopting peaceful means: “Arise and warn, call them to the path of their Lord with wisdom.” According to this