DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SHARIAH AND DEEN

Every act of worship has a spirit as well as an external form. Minhaj is essentially based on ijtihad (exercise of judgement with reasoning). Since ijtihad will remain operative among the Muslim ummah (followers of Prophet Muhammad) till the Day of Judgment, Muslim scholars agree that differences or changes in issues related to minhaj will continue to be made. Addressing the Prophet, God says in the Quran (6: 90): Those [the previous prophets] were the people whom God guided. Follow their guidance then and say, “I ask no reward for this from you: it is only a reminder for all mankind”. Hence, the Prophet repeatedly adopted the manner of earlier prophets in matters of minhaj. One can discover examples of this from the Quran—for instance, exercising patience in the face of the oppression of opponents (46: 35), following the sunnah or practice of the Prophet Joseph in the wake of the victory over Makkah and forgiving the oppressors (12: 92). The differences in the shariahs of the prophets is no mysterious matter. It is based on a proven law of nature—that even if people’s beliefs are exactly the same, the external circumstances in the context of which they function can never be identical. Even a prophet may face different circumstances at different points in his life. Hence, it is absolutely natural that in the application of the shariah there would be differences according to the prevailing circumstances. That the shariahs of different prophets have been different is because of the need to take into account the differences in the prevailing circumstances that the different prophets faced. For instance, as conditions grew severe for Prophet Muhammad in Makkah, God commanded him to leave Makkah and migrate to Madinah. In contrast to this, though conditions that the Prophet Jesus faced in Jerusalem had also become severe, he was not commanded by God to leave Jerusalem and go somewhere else. One reason for this difference is that when Prophet Muhammad migrated to Madinah, the conditions there were very different from those in Makkah and the centre of Islam could very easily be established there, while at the time of Prophet Jesus, there was no place outside Jerusalem like Madinah where he could have gone in order to preach under better conditions.