THE APPLICATION OF SHARI’A IN EGYPT ACCORDING TO AL-‘ASHMAWI
Abstract: The rise
of a vigorous
and sometimes violent
Islamist movement in Egypt
has attracted considerable
attention from scholars. Less
attention has been
given to those
who have responded to
this challenge at
the level of
ideological The Application of Shari’a debate. One of these is a
prominent judge, Muhammad Sa’id al-‘Ashmawi.
He argues that the
call for the
"application of the sharî’a"
(tathbîq al-syarî’ah), watchwords
of the Islamist movement, are
in reality little
more than empty
slogans, designed to get
popular support for
a political venture
but extremely vague and
probably insignificant in substance. In time, however, its
meaning expanded, first to
include all of the rules for
worship and society found in the
Qur’ân, then those in
the sunna of
the Prophet, and
finally all the opinions
and judgments of
the scholars (ijtihâd).
But these opinions and
judgments are properly
called fiqh, and
the final result of the development is that in common usage the term syarî’ah
has come to
mean fiqh.Those who
use the slogan, however, are in
fact calling for the application oí fiqh, that is, a set of rules and laws
devised by humans, not God, to meet historical
conditions of the
past which no
longer obtain. In discussing
ribâ, al-‘Ashmawi holds
that current Egyptian law essentially conforms
to the syarî’ah.
The same is true of the rest of
Egyptian law.
Author: Moh. Jazuli
Journal Code: jphukumgg130031
