Origin 600 to 700 CE
Consultation, and the institution or practice of governing by it. The word is Quranic: 3:159 instructs the Prophet to consult, and 42:38 describes the believers as those whose affairs are decided by mutual consultation, a verse that gives its name to a chapter of the Quran.
Its classical application was narrow. Umar is reported to have appointed a group of six to choose his successor, and that body is the model most often cited. But the classical jurists did not build a standing institution on it, and the mainstream position was that consultation is recommended for a ruler and not binding on him, a reading that turns on whether the imperative in 3:159 obliges the ruler to take the advice or merely to seek it. Al-Tabari and the classical commentators divide on exactly that point.
From the late nineteenth century onwards, reformists including Muhammad Abduh, Rashid Rida and later Islamist writers argued that shura is binding and constitutes an Islamic basis for representative government. Others argued that it constrains rulers without making them accountable to an electorate. The dispute is unresolved, and both readings are argued from the same two verses.
In present use the word names appointed advisory councils in several Gulf states and elected legislatures elsewhere, which are very different institutions sharing a name.
Facts
Origins
Origin Period Organisation
Category of Structure Status
Status TodayLiving tradition, practised today 1 Learn More
Consultation Raised to a Principle of Government
Shura is consultation, and as an institution it is the Islamic principle that legitimate authority takes counsel rather than deciding alone.
A Quranic instruction
The word is Quranic: one verse instructs the Prophet to consult his followers in affairs, and another describes the believers as those who conduct their affairs by mutual consultation, and from these the tradition derives a general principle that rule should be exercised with counsel. In the early community the choice of a successor to the Prophet was framed in terms of consultation among the leading Companions, and the idea of a consultative body, the ahl al-shura, those qualified to advise and to ratify, entered classical political thought as a mark of rightly ordered authority.
An old word in modern argument
Because the sources commend consultation without specifying its machinery, shura has been available to very different modern programmes. Reformers have read it as an Islamic warrant for representative and constitutional government, arguing that consultation implies accountability, while others have kept it advisory, a duty to seek counsel that leaves the final decision with the ruler. Modern states across the Muslim world have named consultative councils shura, with powers ranging from the merely advisory to the substantial, so a single Quranic term now labels institutions that differ sharply in how much authority they actually hold.
From a Quranic Instruction to a Council of Six
Shura's standing as a principle rests on two verses that Muslim commentators return to repeatedly: verse 3:159 instructs Muhammad himself to consult his companions on the community's affairs, and 42:38 praises believers whose affairs are conducted by mutual consultation among themselves, giving the practice scriptural weight beyond ordinary custom. The clearest early instance of shura shaping an actual decision came after the death of the second caliph, Umar, in 644: rather than name a successor outright, he appointed a council of six senior companions and charged them with choosing the next caliph among themselves, a deliberate use of consultation to resolve a succession that had already caused conflict once before.
The council's deliberation produced Uthman as the third caliph, and the episode became the reference point later Muslim political thought returned to whenever it argued that legitimate authority required consultation rather than pure inheritance or conquest. The word has had a second life in the modern period as a name for actual legislative bodies, most visibly in the Majlis al-Shura that serves as a formal consultative or parliamentary assembly in several contemporary states, carrying the old Quranic term into a distinctly modern institution.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Attested In
Belongs to Tradition
Element Of
Ibadi practice makes consultation by the learned of the community the mechanism by which an imam is chosen and can be removed.
Consultation is grounded in the Quran and its classical application was the selection of a ruler, though the jurists did not build a standing institution on it.
Held Differently
Consultation has a place in Twelver political thought but none in designating the Imam, whose office rests on designation and not on the agreement of the community.
Instances
The clearest early instance of the shura consultation principle shaping an actual succession decision.
Sources
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