The Spirit of Islamic Law, by Bernard Weiss, ful fills these objectives admirably. The book has been carefully conceived, researched, and organized. In eight intelligent and highly readable chapters, Weiss identi fies and analyzes the religious, moral, and theological foundations of Islamic law and the salient features of Muslim juristic thought. What follows is merely a thumbnail sketch of a lucid and highly nuanced book. In chapter one, Weiss situates Islamic law in its historical context, with special attention to similarities to and differences from the role of law in Judaism and Christianity.
All legal systems confront the problem of authority.
More than other legal systems, Islam grounds the authority of its law in divine sovereignty. Law is inextricably related to theology and the first element of the Islamic legal imagination is the existence of God. Like their Jewish counterparts, Muslim scholars de fined the relationship between God and humanity in terms of a covenantal relationship. In the Bible, the covenant is embodied in the figure of Abraham. In the Qur'an, it is embodied in that of Adam.