This book studies the jurodynamics of Islamic law in evolutionary spatiotemporal contexts. Written from the internal viewpoint of Muslims, the book discusses the resurgence that Islamic law is experiencing in Muslim communities across the world. The internal viewpoint takes for granted the core Islamic belief that the Qur'an and the Prophet's Sunnah are divine texts, valid all the time and in all places. The universality of Islamic divine texts, however, is not synonymous with natural law articulated in classical Greek and Roman literature, including the works of Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero. While natural law may emanate from reason, intuition, experience, or historical wisdom, the universal law of Islamic divine texts is anchored in faith, a faith neither opposed to reason, intuition, experience, and historical wisdom, nor dependent on any such human construct. From the internal viewpoint, the Qur'an is the Word of God, and the Sunnah is the word of the Prophet. Both sources of law are divine. The Qur'an illuminates the Sunnah, and the Sunnah illuminates the Qur'an. Neither source can be fully understood without the other. Efforts to separate the Qur'an from the Sunnah confuse the purposes of Islamic law.

Contemporary ijtihad refers to efforts that are under way to construct Islamic legal systems and state institutions in the Muslim world. Etymologically, ijtihad and jihad are derived from the same root word, juhd, which means to strive or make an effort. Jihad is striving to propagate the message of Islam and to fight oppression, occupation, and subjugation. Ijtihad is striving, in the realm of law, to solve new legal problems.