Guide to sacred Law in Secular Systems: Shariawiz and Digital Inheritance Fiqh among Muslim Minorities in the United States

Analysis

Published December 2025 in Asy-Syir'ah: Jurnal Ilmu Syari'ah dan Hukum (Vol. 59 No. 2, pp. 252-273), the paper applies a qualitative juridical-normative methodology to ShariaWiz. The authors evaluate how the platform reconciles the mandatory nature of Islamic inheritance (fara'id) with the freedom-of-disposition principle that underlies U.S. estate law. Key findings: (1) ShariaWiz operationalizes 'scholar-certified digital computations' that produce Faraid-compliant distributions encoded as state-law-valid testamentary instructions; (2) the platform's methodology integrates all four Sunni madhhabs, allowing user selection where the schools differ; (3) the work is situated within the broader scholarship on technologically mediated ijtihad and fiqh al-aqalliyyat developed by scholars including Yusuf al-Qaradawi and Taha Jabir al-Alwani. The paper is the first independent academic validation of any U.S. digital Islamic estate-planning platform.