The first groups consists of those Muslim nation states which have no close connection with the non-Islamic legal systems prevailing in the other parts of the world such as the Romanistic, Germanic, Anglo-American or Socialist legal families.
Instead they formally adhere to the Shari’ah as the “source” of their legal systems. These are: Bahrain, Brunei, Comoros, Iran, Kuwait, Maldives, Mauritania, Oman Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen Arab Republic.
Amongst these Iran is unique in its total commitment to Islam as the prevailing supreme source of the country’s legal system. The Iranian revolution of 1979 was an event of historic significance to the entire Muslim world.
The Iranian cultural environment for the majority of the population was: till basically Islamic in spite of the half-century old secularization programmes of the Pahlavi regime.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
This quality added to the fact that Islam is a political religion, made the Iranian revolution an Islamic revolution.
None of the secular ideologies could compete with the Islamic faith. At the end of the popular struggle, therefore, for the first time in recent history the Islamisation advocates gained an opportunity to purify a Muslim culture from the Western influences.
The Islamic revival movements sprang in different parts of the Muslim world in different names and under different banners.
The Senussi order in Libya, the Mehdi uprising in the Sudan, and the Ma al-Aynaym in Mauritania all campaigned for an Islamic order and a rejection of Western values.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
The popular aspiration for a return to Islam has increasingly gathered support in many, if not all, Muslim-populated countries in recent years.
This is basically, because the secular governments in the Muslim world following various nationalist, socialist or reformist doctrines have failed to improve the quality of life for the majority of their populations.
Thus to the Muslim masses a return to their original Islamic patterns of political, legal, economic and social structure seems the only available solution to their problems.
Against such popular demands, Islamisation of law is state-sponsored in Pakistan, Bangladeshi and Saudi Arabia but popular based in others e.g., Iran.