generally came to mean judge and court in the Western sense. While in the traditional Sharia court all parties represented themselves, in modern courts they are represented by professional lawyers educated in Western-style law schools, and the verdicts are subject to review in an appeals court. In the 20th century, most countries abolished a parallel system of Sharia courts and brought all cases under a national civil court system. In most Muslim-majority countries, traditional rules of classical fiqh have been largely preserved only in family law. In some countries religious minorities such as Christians or Shia Muslims have been subject to separate systems of family laws. Many Muslims today believe that contemporary Sharia-based laws are an authentic representation of the pre-modern legal tradition. In reality, they generally represent the result of extensive legal reforms made in the modern era. As traditional Islamic jurists lost their role as authoritative interpreters of the laws applied in courts, these laws were codified by legislators and administered by state systems which employed a number of devices to effect changes, including: Selection of alternative opinions from traditional legal literature (takhayyur), potentially among multiple madhhabs or denominations, and combining parts of different rulings (talfiq). Appeal to the classical doctrines of necessity (darura), public interest (maslaha), and the objectives (maqasid) of Sharia, which played a limited role in classical fiqh, but were now given wider utilitarian applications. Changes in administrative law that grant the courts discretionary powers to restrict certain practices which are not forbidden by substantive law (e.g., polygamy), in some cases imposing penal sanctions as additional deterrence. Modernist interpretation of Islamic scriptures without adherence to the rules or methodologies of traditional jurisprudence, known as neo-ijtihad. The most powerful influence on liberal reformist thought came from the work of the Egyptian Islamic scholar Muhammad ʿAbduh (1849–1905). Abduh viewed only Sharia rules pertaining to religious rituals as inflexible, and argued that the other Islamic laws should be adapted based on changing circumstances in consideration of social well-being. Following precedents of earlier Islamic thinkers, he advocated restoring Islam to its original purity by returning to the Quran and the sunna instead of following the medieval schools of jurisprudence. He championed a creative approach to ijtihad that involved direct interpretation of scriptures as well as the methods of takhayyur and talfiq. One of the most influential figures in modern legal reforms was the Egyptian legal scholar Abd El-Razzak El-Sanhuri