ABSTRACT
The Sharī‘a does not legislate for the conscience. A social discipline, a sort of higher law, it confines its ambition to gathering all the faithful round the rites and observances of the Islāmic community, without troubling to enter into the details of their inner life. Fidelity to the Sharī‘a is nevertheless supposed to be the way of spiritual perfection. To doubt this would be to question its character of revealed legislation. It is difficult to imagine a more precise antinomy than exists between this conception and that which gave birth to Ṣūfism.
