(In the name of God, the Most Beneficent, the Most Merciful)
Thank you for your question.
For understanding the subject of Islamic law or
shariah, I'd kindly request you to read the beneficial treatise
Understanding Islamic Law.
Now, to answer your question:
Historically, the one instance I recall reading in which the spirit of the
shariah was followed is when Prophet Ayuub a.k.a. Prophet Job
(peace be upon him) promised to beat his wife 100 strokes when when he recovered his health for her disobedience and evil words against God when she asked him to forsake his faith in God due to the suffering they'd been enduring. So, when he recovered after he'd supplicated to Allah, “Verily, distress has seized me, and You are the Most Merciful of all who show mercy” (Quran 83:21), he knew he was obliged to fulfill his oath. So, despite the fact that he knew he had to fulfill his oath as
shariah requires believers who takes oaths to fulfill it, he'd been feeling bad for she'd been with him all these years and he didn't want to repay her service to him this way and so God revealed to him in His infinite mercy to use blades of grass to strike her 100 times. In this way, he fulfilled his oath as required by
shariah, the spirit of the oath, that is.
Similarly, in Islam, we're told to ensure that we eat
halal meat. However, my
sheikh (Islamic teacher) (may Allah bless him) had said that if a new Muslim invites us to dinner/lunch/whatever and even we may have doubt about this person having cooked
halal, we still have to assume out of good manners that the food served is entirely
halal out of
adab (etiquette) rather than question the host. That is because the entire purpose of Islam, specifically
shariah, is to teach and cultivate good character and manners. This is another example of following the spirit of
shariah.
That said, I want to be clear and say that this does not mean that
shariah can be circumvented, as sincerity to God must be at the root of all intentions and actions;
shariah is the legal foundation of how a Muslim conducts his daily life from praying to eating to going to the bathroom to ablution to dealing in money that leads to spiritual prosperity here and hereafter. Without following
shariah, a person will go astray. As an analogy,
shariah is the roof and the walls of the house (of Islam in this case); and good manners and characters required of
ihsan (excellence) are the beautiful decor and furnishings inside the house (of Islam). The purpose of
shariah is to enable
ihsan (excellence in worship).
Prophet

(peace and blessings be upon him) had said, “I have been sent to perfect noble character.” This is the main purpose of Islam.
When asked about the best of the believers, the Prophet

(peace and blessings be upon him) replied, “They are those who have the best character and manners.”
Hope that answers your question
In-sha-Allah (God-willing).
Wishing you the best,
Can anyone think of a case where doing the opposite of a 7th century sharia today might actually be obeying the sharia better than doing it as prescribed in the 7th century? An example from the Torah: God said to not harvest the corners of the fields but leave it for poor people to go and pick. Today, a farmer in my country does not have poor people looking for food in his field. The poor people are holding a sign at Wal Mart. He should harvest the whole field and take the money he gained from the corners and take it to a poor person who needs it. If he doesn't harvest the corners of his field he accomplishes nothing. For him, to obey the Torah, he would actually do the opposite of what it says. Can you think of any cases in Islamic teaching where this would be the case?