Shari'a

Shari'a is the methodology by which justice is determined in Islamic societies. Shari'a translates most closely into the English language as “the way” and achieved a definitive literary form in the late 12th century with the Hidaya. When properly understood, this methodology explains the continuity and change in which Muslims embrace the world as they reconcile the inner or spiritual life with the outer or public life. Four criteria are employed to find the way to proper living and allow understanding of Islamic gender roles, social, and familial relationships.

The Hidaya serves as a framework on which to base judicial decisions but is not a definitive set of rules. As a collection of previous decisions, the Hidaya enables analogy to guide Islamic scholars of jurisprudence toward the way of truth. Shari'a is often misinterpreted by Western society as Islamic law, but that is not accurate.

Islamic societies can be found throughout the world. Any normative Islamic law must be rejected as a description applied to peoples from the position of 19th- and 20th-century Orientalists from Western cultures applying modern concepts of progress, religion, civilization, law, and religion where those concepts have never before been understood with such rigidity. Sources of law as understood in Islamic societies as the way to find truth or justice are found in the Qur'an, the hadith or sayings of the prophet, the ijma' or collective input of schools and community, and by qiyas or reasoning by analogy.

Shari'a requires using all previous knowledge from these sources. By drawing from this fourfold source, much diversity in interpretation and application of law is possible. The pluri-cultural nature of Islamic societies allows for even more dynamism in decisions that apply to matters of law as written or as it occurs. For example, Sunni Muslim scholars are more concerned with the philosophy and practice of jurisprudence and procedure than do the members of the many Shi'a sects. Moreover, the Sufis are concerned with the personal experience of truth because each individual can understand it differently.

Therefore, any description of gender roles in Islamic societies can be understood as a matter of traditional roles that have undergone reexamination, reinterpretation, and reification. As described by the Prophet, by centuries of scholastic discourse, by reasoning through stories concerning men and women passed down from generation to generation, and by a reading of the Qur'an, gender roles are capable of continuity and change. Although Egyptian scholar Sheikh Muhammad al-Ghazali described the proper public behavioral norms for women in the 1950s and revised them in the 1980s based on his use of the methodological framework of Shari'a, no definitive legal restrictions exists for sexual or gender behaviors