In the modern era, sharia-based laws were widely replaced by statutes based on European models, and its classical rules were largely retained only in personal status (family) laws. Different explanations have been proposed for this phenomenon. Several scholars have argued that because these laws are more extensively specified in the Quran and hadith than others, it has been difficult for believers to accept deviating from these rules. In contrast, Wael Hallaq sees it as a legacy of colonialism: changing family laws would have provided no benefit in colonial administration, and colonial powers promoted the theory that these laws were sacred to the population, advertising their preservation as a mark of respect, which in turn led to them being taken up as a point of reference in modern Muslim identity politics.