The present day emerges as one of the most important and creative in the history of Islamic law, and especially of the criminal justice and penal elements of Islamic law. The current wave of interest in an Islamic penology represents a practical consideration of possible Islamic solutions to enduring problems of just government and just criminal administration. Such an effort to meet Muslim ideals in practical government has hardly been seen since the first generations of the Muslim community.
From the time of the Prophet, Islam has been a religion of faith in action. Islam does not seek to set religion and its ideals off in a separate mental chapel, set away from the rest of life. Instead, the symbol of Islam might be the prayer rug, the place of worship which the worshipper can carry with him through the course of his daily life. Islam teaches its believers to follow the path of righteousness day by day in their social relations with others.
Islam thus has, in principle, a public and "political" component. And indeed, the early Muslim community was a political entity as well as a community of faith. Its law, Shari'a, evolved in the first instance as a practical law, designed to apply both religious principles and common sense to the problems from business disputes to family law to crime and punishment that arose in the community of the faithful.
Because it is a practical law as well as a law rooted in religious principles, Shari'a is not necessarily to be seen as a law fixed by God that cannot be altered or developed. According to Ahmad Zaki Yamani (1388 A.H.), "the religious essence and value of the Shari'a must never be overestimated." Note, incidentally, that this seemingly radical view is put out under the auspices of the Saudi Publishing House, a quasi official organ of in supposedly arch conservative Saudi Arabia. Indeed, Muslims regard the Prophet himself as a human inspired by ...