Islamic law is a particularly instructive example of
"sacred law." Islamic law is a phenomenon so different
from all other forms of law—notwithstanding, of course,
a considerable and inevitable number of coincidences
with one or the other of them as far as subject matter and
positive enactment are concerned—that its study is
indispensable in order to appreciate adequately the full
range of possible legal phenomena. Even the two other
representatives of sacred law that are historically and
geographically nearest to it, Jewish law and Roman
Catholic canon law, are perceptibly different.
Both Jewish law and canon law are more uniform
than Islamic law. Though historically there is a
discernible break between Jewish law of the sovereign
state of ancient Israel and of the Diaspora (the dispersion
of Jewish people after the conquest of Israel), the spirit of
the legal matter in later parts of the Old Testament is very
close to that of the Talmud, one of the primary
codifications of Jewish law in the Diaspora. Islam, on the
other hand, represented a radical breakaway from the
Arab paganism that preceded it; Islamic law is the result
of an examination, from a religious angle, of legal subject
matter that was far from uniform, comprising as it did the
various components of the laws of pre-Islamic Arabia and
numerous legal elements taken over from the non-Arab
peoples of the conquered territories. All this was unified
by being subjected to the same kind of religious scrutiny,
the impact of which varied greatly, being almost
nonexistent in some fields, and in others originating novel
institutions. This central duality of legal subject matter
and religious norm is additional to the variety of legal,
ethical, and ritual rules that is typical of sacred law.
In its relation to the secular state, Islamic law
differed from both Jewish and canon law. Jewish law was
buttressed by the cohesion of the community, reinforced
by pressure from outside; its rules are the direct
expression of this feeling of cohesion, tending toward the
accommodation of dissent. Canon and Islamic law, on the
contrary, were dominated by the dualism of religion and
state, where the state was not, in contrast with Judaism,
an alien power but the political expression of the same
religion. But the conflict between state and religion took
different forms; in Christianity it appeared as the struggle
for political power on the part of a tightly organized
ecclesiastical hierarchy, and canon law was one of its
political weapons. Islamic law, on the other hand, was
never supported by an organized institution; consequently,
there never developed an overt trial of strength. There
merely existed discordance between application of the
sacred law and many of the regulations framed by
Islamic states; this antagonism varied according to place
and time.