The reason religious authority figures in Islam have the capacity to be resilient is that they always have been able to adapt to the exigencies of change; for traditional Sunni and Shī῾ī authority figures, the best of all worlds is the one created by God where a hierarchical order of revealed religious norms guarantees theologians-legislators, preachers and imams, in particular, influence and even control over the good and the path to salvation. Change is human and constancy is divine, and if change does come, it must do so to rectify a state of moral degeneracy. When people change, it is usually towards evil (a condition condemned by Sunnis as sedition and by Shīʿīs as alteration or falsification). However, in the modern world, as Hart expresses it, systems of laws and moral norms tend to be managed by the rule of change where societies and states constantly revise, criticise, reform and change laws and norms on the basis of societal or political considerations.1 Traditional religious authorities hold that Islamic norms are divine, unchanging and appropriate for any time and any place; this provides figures of religious authority with the ultimate legitimacy and justification for their authority. As modern societies undergo rapid change (especially in recent years), “questions are inevitably raised about the legitimacy of the sources of authority”.2