In recent time Saudi Arabia has been leading the moderate factions of Islamic revival. These “moderates” seem to have lost to the more aggressive forces of Islam who campaign for total abandonment of western philosophy and law.
Hence it is said that in Saudi Arabia Islam is subservient to the government and used as means of legitiinisation of the Saudi rule. This approach is branded as “establishment Islam” (as opposed to “pure” or “populist Islam”).
The events in the various Muslim countries show that “the return to Islam” school is accorded greater and greater ascendance.
In all the Gulf States, Egypt, Pakistan and elsewhere there is a genuine demand for Islamisation of the legal system.
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Modernisation has been resisted in the past in various parts of the Muslim world. For example King Amanullah’s legal reforms in Afghanistan resulted in a tribal-led revolt which forced the Shah of Afghanistan to abdicate in 1929.
Almost fifty years later the Shah of Iran faced a similar fate, although too much westernisation was only one of the many reasons for the Shah of Iran’s downfall.
Since the success of the Iranian revolution in 1979, the modernist faction has become weaker in the jurisprudence of the Muslim countries.
Kuwait is a primary example of a Muslim society which embraced liberal and Western attitudes throughout the sixties and seventies.
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Since, 1979 the situation has changed. Few Islamic activists known in Kuwait as the Ahl al-Salaf (People of Tradition) forced the resignation of a couple of cabinet ministers in 1986 upon which the Amir dissolved the country’s parliament.
In spite of the return to Islam movements, in most Muslim States, the Shari’ah and secular laws are still applied often side by side.
Even in Iran, par excellence an Islamic Republic, the vast body of state secular legislation has not been totally abandoned.
By and large, it is still the secular law which applies to commercial law and business in general, and to the law of government contracts in particular.
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However, Islamic law is applied, wherever possible, to fill the gaps in business law. The new Civil Code of the United Arab Emirates promulgated last year is an example of the Sharia in general.