No. 041
Islamic law is a phenomenon so different from all other forms of law – notwithstanding, of course, a considerable and inevitable number of coincidences with one or the other of them as far as subject matter and positive enactment are concerned – that its study is indispensable in order to appreciate adequately the full range of possible legal phenomena.
No. 042
Both Jewish law and canon law are more uniform that Islamic law. Though historically there is a discernible break between Jewish law of the sovereign state of ancient Israel and of the Diaspora (the dispersion of Jewish people after the conquest of Israel), the spirit of the legal matter in later parts of the Old Testament is very close to that of the Talmud, one of the primary codifications of Jewish law in the Diaspora.
No. 043
Islam, on the other hand, represented a radical breakaway from the Arab paganism that preceded it; Islamic law is the result of an examination, from a religious angle, of legal subject matter that was far from uniform, comprising as it did the various components of the laws of pre-Islamic Arabia and numerous legal elements taken over from the non-Arab peoples of the conquered territories.
No. 044
One such novel idea is that of inserting into the chromosomes of plants discrete genes that are not a part of the plants’ natural constitution: specifically, the idea of inserting into nonleguminous plants the genes, if they can be identified and isolated, that fit the leguminous plants to be hosts for nitrogen-fixing bacteria. Hence, that intensified research on legumes.
No. 045
It is one of nature’s great ironies that the availability of nitrogen in the soil frequently sets an upper limit on plant growth even though the plants’ leaves are bathed in a sea of nitrogen gas.
