THOUGH SHARIAH LAW is widely believed to endorse chopping off hands, stonings, floggings, and persecution of "blasphemers", a leading Islamic scholar argues that the spirit of Islamic law is about fairness and justice and embraces the modern concept of human rights as defined by the United Nations.

Sharia, the moral code and religious law of Islam, is not what is seen in Pakistan, where unsubstantiated allegations of blasphemy often lead to imprisonment, vigilante violence and extra-judicial killing, said Prof. Abdullah Saeed, the Sultan of Oman Professor of Arab and Islamic Studies at the University of Melbourne, Australia.

"Sharia, in its totality and if properly understood, is a very fair system of law," Saeed underscored, speaking at the Witherspoon Institute's recent seminar, "The Quran in the Modern World," held at Princeton University. Islamic law has a process. There must be evidence, a judge, and state institutions to implement it, he said.

"Vigilantism is not something Islamic law recognizes. In fact, it's considered a crime in Islamic law," added Saeed, who received his early education at conservative Islamic seminaries in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.

The scholar agreed that Islamic law was being used as an excuse for restricting rights as well as vigilantism, things he described as a "distortion of Sharia". Saeed blames opportunist Muslim politicians for twisting the tradition by "the selective misuse of certain laws based on Sharia."

Saeed added that the failure of the secular state in Muslim-majority countries led to a sudden interest in Sharia as the savior. "Sharia is the last resort for people who have lost hope in the existing justice system or governance," he explained.

Saeed said even the calls for wholesale Islamization of societies and nations is a somewhat 20th century idea, influenced by Marxism and other ideologies and developed by groups like the Muslim Brotherhood and the Jamaat-e-Islami. "For 1,400 years, Muslims were living their lives in Muslim societies without any need to 'Islamize' their society or polity, in the way Islamization is understood today."

Saeed said the Qur'an and Hadith also set specific conditions under which harsh punishments, such as chopping off of hands and flogging, can be meted out on a convict.

"These conditions," he said, "would make it very rare for such a punishment to actually be given to anyone in real terms." For example, four male witnesses are needed to prove adultery (sexual intercourse), which is very rarely committed in the open, he added.

"The Qur'an is about justice, and so is the purpose of Sharia," Saeed stressed.

While some Muslim political leaders in "Islamic" or Muslim-majority countries regard Western-style democracy and personal rights as an agenda of the "Christian West" being imposed on the Muslim world, Saeed said he sees even Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as compatible with the Qur'an.

Article 18 of the 1948 UDHR states: "Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance."

"When you look at Article 18 - one of the most controversial in the UDHR from a Muslim point of view- and look at the Qur'anic view of religious and personal freedoms, there are literally over a hundred verses that you can cite in favor of these freedoms," Saeed declared.

On religious freedom, Saeed said, "[Even] The Prophet Mohammed did not have the authority to impose his religion on anyone."

The purpose of Sharia, as most scholars say, is to protect or preserve five universal necessities: religion, life, intellect, lineage/family, and wealth/property.

"I'd argue," Saeed went on to say, "that the understanding of the protection of life has to be expanded to cover how we understand it in the contemporary human rights issues." Even the protection of religion, he added, is to be expanded to cover provisions in the Article 18 of the UDHR.

The UDHR, he added "is not necessarily a Western document imposed upon non-Western nations or people. It is a document which was developed by a whole range of countries, including Muslim nations, such as Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. I think the document is an expression of the community of people - Jews, Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, atheists - as to what is acceptable to all of us."

The Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam (CDHRI) provides an overview on the Islamic perspective on human rights, and affirms Sharia as its sole source.

The CDHRI, composed by member states of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference adopted in Cairo in 1990, "does not appear to be widely known among Muslims, and few perhaps use it as a basis for their understanding of human rights from an Islamic perspective," Saeed added.

"Even Muslim critics of the UDHR accept that the vast majority of the rights referred to in the document can be justified in the Qur'an and Sunnah," the scholar said. "Only a relatively few rights, such as the right to change religion in the Article 18, are seen as controversial."

Saeed also said that the justice system in Western countries may be often fairer and more Islamic in spirit than what is found in most Muslim-majority countries.

Explaining the origin of Sharia (for Sunni Muslims), Saeed said al-Shaf'i (one of the great jurists of Islam) and many other scholars wanted to bring all areas of law under Islam. "They argued that law had to be religious in nature, and law had to be based on the Qur'an and the Sunna of the Prophet."

Sunna denotes the practice of the Prophet Muhammad.

"The scholars extended the limited number of rules found in the Qur’an and Sunna by using a number of tools, including quiyas (analogical deduction). And in order to give an authoritative basis for the laws that were being developed, Muslim scholars also developed the idea of ijma or consensus."

The ijma is the consensus of the Muslim community or that of Muslim scholars on a particular point of law, Saeed said, adding that there were many theoretical problems with the concept of ijma­ ­- such as whether it should be of scholars of a particular generation or only the first generation of Muslims.

"Although Shafi'i would not have been very comfortable with the idea of ambiguity of the text that developed later in Islamic jurisprudence, this idea became quite influential in Islamic jurisprudence."

This ambiguity, Saeed said, "provides enormous flexibility for Muslim jurists to develop Islamic law and to bring it in line with changing circumstances."

However, each school of law have established traditions, principles and ideas, he clarified. "So incremental changes are fine, but the wholesale change of a law in place is not acceptable."

To underline the need for contextual interpretation of the Qur'an, Saeed gave the example of Umar, one of the four Rashidun Caliphs or the first four caliphs in Islam's history. Umar, he said, refused to give Zaqat (the giving of a fixed portion of one's wealth to charity) to a group of people belonging to one of the eight categories that qualify to receive Zakat funds as mentioned in the Qur'an.

Umar said Islam was weak when the command was given, but now the religion was strong, and there was no need to pay Zakat to them. Umar understood the intent of the text, Saeed said.

Saeed appeared to be optimistic about the future. "A new way of thinking about law has been developing since the 19th and 20th centuries in [Islamic] jurisprudence... Islamic law is also coming to terms with contemporary debates on areas such as human rights and gender equality, in line with the spirit of the time," he said.