The Middle East (general catch all)

[Nat Wilcox]

Thanks for posting this. I am getting into it.

I'm having some difficulty understanding the difference between these three terms:

Sharia

Islamic Law

Fiqh

I have a feeling, based on different things I have read, that there is a great deal of confusion concerning these three terms. Different sources (both Arab and English) seem to use them in different ways.

One of the three seems to correspond closely to what we in Anglophone countries would call "common law," but I have seen each of these three terms described in a way that resembles common law. One of the authors in Jedburgh's post describes fiqh as Islamic Jurisprudence which is then defined by the author as "an aggregation of individual opinions and juristic interpretations, which differ not only from one country to another, but which also change with the passage of time." That author then says that Islamic Law is based on fiqh. That sounds a lot like our idea of common law; but is that somehow a wrong metaphor?

One of them almost certainly has more to do with abstract principles, like "constitutional" parts of law. Is this Sharia? Or is Sharia an older version of Islamic Law?

Is there someone amongst us who has the sophistication to help me out on this?