Premodern Islamic governance could not suspend its law under any exception

Evidence

Nor were all segments of the population inclined toward Shariʿa norms: the Bedouins in particular had their own powerful customs, often conflicting with these norms. Like any social groupings, Muslim society from North Africa and Muslim Spain to Java and Samarkand had its share of misery. It obviously had its own invaders and conquerors, its rebels, larcenists, petty thieves, and highway robbers, and even the occasional corrupt judge. Nonetheless, the Shariʿa was the normative system and the law of the land, its paradigmatic discourses and practices persisting in the continual re-creation of a particular order and, more importantly, a particular subject. With their military might and often unmatched power, sultans in Islam, the heads of the executive, came and went, one after the other, without as little as a murmur about an ambition to challenge the Shariʿa. — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 154 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Shari¯‘a courts had primary jurisdiction over urban Muslims, rural tribes followed customary rules and procedures (‘urf ), and milliyya courts were regulated by and for the various sects of Christians and Jews. Hence shari¯‘a courts were by no means the only form of law administration. Indeed, the ruler had his own body of administrative law (qanu¯n) that did not draw its authority from the shari¯‘a. — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 997 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: European rulers could not impose Roman law wholesale on fragmented polities. — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 130; Pre-modern Islamic law stood above all political will and could not be suspended; Ottoman sultans ruled subject to Islamic Holy Law they could not alter — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans: Interpreting…, 639 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Pre-modern Islamic law stood above all political will and could not be suspended #corroborates (0.97)
• Islamic rulers never challenged Shariʿa supremacy despite their military power #corroborates (0.92) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 154
• Pre-modern Islamic states never had a single unified religious law. #complicates (0.76) — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 997