فقه
Fiqh
Islamic jurisprudence: the scholars’ work of understanding and applying the sharia.
What it means
Fiqh means “understanding”, and the Quran uses the idea of seeking understanding in the religion (9:122). The four main Sunni schools, Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi’i and Hanbali, and other schools such as the Ja’fari and Ibadi, each reached rulings by a method of reading the sources, and they often disagree.
Often misunderstood as
That Islamic law is one rulebook with one answer on each question.
What the sources say
Disagreement among the schools is normal and long recognised. A ruling is a scholar’s judgement of what the sources require, offered with its evidence, and a Muslim chooses a qualified scholar to follow. Many things people call “Islamic law” in the news are a particular government’s choice among such opinions, or custom, not the sources themselves.
Term and Arabic as listed in Ismail al Faruqi, Toward Islamic English (International Institute of Islamic Thought, 1995), p. 51, listed as FIQH. The definition is restated here.