Formation and Development of Sources of Muslim Law

• Valentina G. Balkovaya

  Valentina G. Balkovaya. Far Eastern Law Institute (branch) of the University of the Prosecutor's Office. Vladivostok. Russia

An important task of legal comparativism in the context of globalization is to ensure effective interaction between countries belonging to different legal systems and families. This cannot be chieved without studying the sources of law that have developed within each legal system. The relevance of comparative research into the Muslim legal family is determined by the fact that, in the modern world, the population of countries within this family has reached one and a half billion people and continues to grow. The uniqueness of this legal family, which includes all countries of the "Muslim world", is determined by the fact that religious texts – the Quran and Sunnah – serve as its primary sources of law, embodying the distinctive features of legal consciousness inherent in the population of Muslim countries/ It is important to understand that without a systematic study of the content of the original norms of Muslim law, as well as practical methods for adapting them to con-
temporary political realities, it is impossible to achieve sustainable legal interaction between Muslim countries and other legal systems, nor political stability in many regions of the modern world. R. David noted the duality of law inherent in Muslim countries, each of which has developed its own system of sources of national positive law alongside Muslim supranational law. Given that the Muslim world today is heterogeneous and unstable, it is important to determine the mechanisms of interaction between Muslim law itself and the national laws of individual Muslim countries, and the degree of their mutual influence in specific political entities.
Keywords: Muslim law, Islam, Sharia, fiqh, Islamic law, religious legal system, Muslim state