The Islamic law is also known as the Shariah Law. The Shariah Law rules and regulates all aspects of public and private behavior. It prescribes specific rules for prayers, fasting, giving to the poor, and many other religious matters. It also has regulations for personal matters including sexual conduct, and elements of child rearing; as well regulation in transactions and criminal matters. As deducted from the Arabic meaning of Sharia, it is essentially the "way".

The Islamic law does not conform to the notion of law as found, for example, in the common law. Rather than a uniform and unequivocal formulation of the law, it is a scholarly discourse consisting of the opinions of religious scholars, who argue on the basis of the text of the Holy Quran, the sacred hadith and the consensus of Muslim scholars.

Islam has, in fact, adopted two courses for the preservation of the five indispensables in human life: religion (Islam), life, intellect, offspring and property. The first is through cultivating religious consciousness (al wazi' al dint) in the human soul and the awakening of human awareness through moral education. The second is by inflicting deterrent punishment (al qanun), which is the basis of the Islamic criminal system. The Islamic Criminal Law, which is part of the Shariah Law, provides a worldly punishment in addition to that in the hereafter.

In the classical textbooks of fiqh, criminal law is not regarded as a single, unified branch of the law. Provisions regarding offences mentioned in the Quran and Hadith constitute violations of the claims of God (the right of Allah), with mandatory fixed punishments; these offences are: apostasy (riddah), highway robbery (hirabah), unlawful sexual intercourse (zina), theft (sariqah), the unfounded accusation of unlawful sexual intercourse (qazaj) and drinking alcohol (syurb khamr). Provisions for offences against another person, i.e. homicide and wounding, are subdivided into, (i) those regarding retaliation (qisas) and, (ii) those regarding financial compensation (diyat). And they are provisions concerning discretionary punishment of sinful or forbidden behaviour or of acts endangering public order or state security (ta'zir).