A. The Basis of Islamic Law

In Islam, there are four main recognized sources of sharia:1

1. The Quran, which Muslims believe to be a direct revelation from God to Prophet Muhammad, and which lays down some specific legal injunctions, but a much broader array of general principles from which laws are derived.

2. The Sunna, which refers to the actions or pronouncements of Prophet Muhammad, both spiritual and legal. These are considered to be the application of Quranic principles.

3. Ijmaa, or the consensus of opinions on an issue, thus forming the basis for its inclusion into the corpus of Islamic law.

4. Qiyas, or the process of analogical deductions of new laws from standing law or from new interpretations of juristic principles. This falls under the broader practice known as ijtihad, defined as "the use of human reason in the elaboration and explanation of the Sharia Law."2

A fifth source of religious law recognized in numerous schools of thought is the concept known as Istihasan, most closely translated as "the public good." Therefore, considerations of public welfare can, in and of themselves, motivate lawmaking without the necessity of direct textual references.

In light of these sources of Islamic law and democracy, the relevant questions then become:

a. What are the textual legal principles within the Quran or sunna on the issue of governance?

b. Historically, how have they been applied and understood?

c. Currently, how are they constructed and understood? The fact that both questions "b" and "c" are posed implies that there is some dynamism within Islamic jurisprudence; otherwise, the historical application would de facto be the current application as well.

To summarize the answers which follow, it can be said with certainty that there is an extremely powerful and broad-ranging trend in modern Islamic juristic thought that the correct application of Islamic political principles is some form of representative democracy. This thinking is not universal, but is becoming more pervasive, such that it may be said to be now dominant in, and characteristic of, many Islamic discourses.

The objections to representative democracy are along two main lines: it breaks historical precedent of how the Muslim umma (global Muslim community) has ruled itself, under the system of Caliphs, and it transfers sovereignty from God to people.