Which religion is ruled by the Shariah (Sharīʿah)?

Sharīʿah, also spelled Sharia is the fundamental religious concept of Islam—namely, its law. The religious law of Islam is seen as the expression of God’s command for Muslims and, in application, constitutes a system of duties that are incumbent upon all Muslims by virtue of their religious belief.

Its scope is very wide regulating the individual’s relationship not only with neighbours and with the state, which is the limit of most other legal systems, but also with God and with the individual’s own conscience. It is concerned as much with ethical standards as with legal rules, indicating not only what an individual is entitled or bound to do in law but also what one ought, in conscience, to do or to refrain from doing. It is acomprehensive code of behaviour that embraces both private and public activities.

As regards the practical effects of legal reform, in many Muslim countries there is a deep social gulf between a Westernized and modernist minority and the conservative mass of the population. Reforms that aim at satisfying the standards of progressive urban society have little significance for the traditionalist communities of rural areas or for Muslim conservatives, whose geographical and social distribution crosses all apparent boundaries.