Peter Krause 
The Sharia. Where did Islamic Law come from? [PDF ebook] 

Essay from the year 2014 in the subject Orientalism / Sinology — Islamic Studies, grade: 2, 0, University of Exeter, language: English, abstract: Thinking about where Islamic Law comes from, we have to distinguish between the scientific side, fiqh, and the religious side, the revealed texts. With God as the legislator, society has to incorporate the given rules into daily life. However they are not always clear, so frictions are attempted to be solved using the four sources of Islamic Law.
Hence, Islamic Law can not exist just as a fixed statute, which regulates rights and duties of Muslims. It is more a method to interpret what the law includes, influenced strongly by the opinions of different legal scholars. There exists therefore an uncertainty in what the law finally includes, because of disagreements between scholars, called ikhtilᾱf.