ABSTRACT
On the supreme constitutional issue of the nature and incidents of political sovereignty in the Islamic theocratic state the four Sunnite schools of law speak with one voice. In fact, the sectarian legal systems, far from being wholly independent growths, often directly borrowed rules developed in the Sunnite schools. This has been convincingly demonstrated by Schacht. Sexual intercourse in Sunnite Islam is legal and permissible on two grounds only—the dominion that a master possesses over his slave-girl or a valid contract of marriage. Ithna-asharite law, however, recognises a third, and totally different, permissible form of sexual relationship known as muta. Muta, then, is not simply a nikah with an accompanying condition of a time-limit, but is a distinct and individual legal institution. Ithna-asharite law, therefore, cannot properly be regarded as a system adopted from the Sunnites and superficially modified to accord with political tenets.
