THE SHARÎ'A OR ISLAMIC CODE OF CONDUCT Medieval Muslim society, in word and deed, aspired to discern and obey the will of God. In every thought, word, and action, the man was accountable to God on the Day of Judgment. Hence, Muslim social ideals were humanist ideals-the balanced and harmonious development of the human faculties or creating a man-conceived utopia on earth, for example. A New World for Muslims could only mean one in which they had discovered God's Will and were obeying it more fully than before. Moreover, society was thought of as a situation that human beings were forced to accept, rather than a series of relationships that might be transformed into willing partnerships for mutual companionship and welfare. However, the Muslim's individual relationship to God was not stressed at the expense of social order. Belief in God and His Prophet implied acceptance of the Shari'a revealed through the Qur'ân and the Sunna of Muhammad. This Shari'a governed both doctrine and practice. It defined not merely right belief about God's Unity, His Power, and His Knowledge, but also those external acts of devotion-personal, e.g., prayer or pilgrimage, or social, e.g., almsgiving, avoidance of usury, maintenance of certain discriminations against the unbeliever-compliance with which attested one's membership in God's community before the eyes of the world. The Shari'a set the perfect standard for earthly society; it was the practical embodiment of the unity of the distinctive ideology of Islam. As has been explained above, the Qur'ân and the Sunna of the prophet were, after his death, the two chief sources of guidance to the believer hence of the Shari'a... To later generations, the knowledge of the Shari'a is authoritatively communicated through the systems of jurisprudence worked out by the orthodox schools of law. Jurisprudence is the science of deducing the mandates of the Shari'a from its bases in the Qur'ân and Sunna, and, in add...