Editing Sharia (section)

===Under colonial rule===
Starting from the 17th century, European powers began to extend political influence over lands ruled by Muslim dynasties, and by the end of the 19th century, much of the Muslim world came under colonial domination. The first areas of Islamic law to be impacted were usually commercial and criminal laws, which impeded colonial administration and were soon replaced by European regulations.{{sfn|Hallaq|2010|p=174}} Islamic commercial laws were also replaced by European (mostly French) laws in Muslim states which retained formal independence, because these states increasingly came to rely on Western capital and could not afford to lose the business of foreign merchants who refused to submit to Islamic regulations.{{sfn|Vikør|2014}}

[[File:Warren Hastings.jpg|thumb|upright|[[Warren Hastings]] initiated far-reaching legal reforms in British India.]]
The first significant changes to the legal system of [[Presidencies and provinces of British India|British India]] were initiated in the late 18th century by the governor of Bengal [[Warren Hastings]]. Hastings' plan of legal reform envisioned a multi-tiered court system for the Muslim population, with a middle tier of British judges advised by local Islamic jurists, and a lower tier of courts operated by qadis. Hastings also commissioned a translation of the classic manual of Hanafi fiqh, ''[[Al-Hidayah]]'', from Arabic into Persian and then English, later complemented by other texts.{{sfn|Hallaq|2010|pp=176–81}}{{sfn|Masud|2009}} These translations enabled British judges to pass verdicts in the name of Islamic law based on a combination of Sharia rules and [[common law]] doctrines, and eliminated the need to rely on consultation by local ulema, whom they mistrusted. In the traditional Islamic context, a concise text like ''Al-Hidayah'' would be used as a basis for classroom commentary by a professor, and the doctrines thus learned would be mediated in court by judicial discretion, consideration of local customs and availability of different legal opinions that could fit the facts of the case. The British use of ''Al-Hidayah'', which amounted to an inadvertent codification of Sharia, and its interpretation by judges trained in Western legal traditions anticipated later legal reforms in the Muslim world.{{sfn|Hallaq|2010|pp=176–81}}{{sfn|Stewart|2013|p=503}}

British administrators felt that Sharia rules too often allowed criminals to escape punishment, as exemplified by Hastings' complaint that Islamic law was "founded on the most lenient principles and on an abhorrence of bloodshed".{{sfn|Hallaq|2010|pp=176–81}} In the course of the 19th century, criminal laws and other aspects of the Islamic legal system in India were supplanted by British law, with the exception of Sharia rules retained in family laws and some property transactions.{{sfn|Hallaq|2010|pp=176–81}}{{sfn|Masud|2009}} Among other changes, these reforms brought about abolition of slavery, prohibition of child marriage, and a much more frequent use of capital punishment.{{sfn|Hallaq|2009b|p=378}}{{sfn|Masud|2009}}  The resulting legal system, known as ''[[Anglo-Muhammadan law]]'', was treated by the British as a model for legal reforms in their other colonies. Like the British in India, colonial administrations typically sought to obtain precise and authoritative information about indigenous laws, which prompted them to prefer classical Islamic legal texts over local judicial practice. This, together with their conception of Islamic law as a collection of inflexible rules, led to an emphasis on traditionalist forms of Sharia that were not rigorously applied in the pre-colonial period and served as a formative influence on the modern identity politics of the Muslim world.{{sfn|Masud|2009}}