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In plain terms
Sharia
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Sharia is the broader body of Islamic law and guidance from the Qur'an and the sunnah. Fiqh is the detailed human scholarship built on top of it. The two words are related, but not identical.
Related terms
Fiqh
Fiqh is the human effort to understand and apply Islamic law. It works out everyday practice — prayer, transactions, family life — from the Qur'an, hadith, and scholarly…
Sunnah
Sunnah is the example of the Prophet Muhammad — his sayings, actions, and approvals, recorded in hadith. It is a source of Islamic law second only to the Qur'an. The word is also…
Madhhab
A madhhab is an established school of Islamic legal thought, built on a shared method for deriving rulings. The four Sunni schools in wide use today are Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi'i…