islamic law exists in many variations - in arabic it is called shariah - five schools of which were created centuries ago. these are the classical fiqh: the hanafi school from india, pakistan and bangaladesh, west africa, egypt, the maliki in north africa and west africa, the shafi in malaysia and indonesia, the hanbali in arabia, and jaferi in iran and iraq - where the majority is shia. all five are very old and many muslims feel a new fiqh must be created for modern society. islam has a method for doing this, al-urf and ijtihad are the words to describe this method, but they have not been used in a long time, and few people are trusted enough to use them to make new laws.