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Islamic Laws

According to Islamic jurisprudence there are four sources of Islamic Law namely:

1. The Quran.
2. The Sunna (Traditions of Prophet Muhammad).
3. Ijma ( consensus of Opinion)
4. Qiyas (Analogy)

The Quran: is considered as the basis of Islamic law. Every word of the Quran is being regarded as the direct utterance of Almighty, godfather, communicated in actual words by Angel Gabriel to the Prophet. The Quran itself is not the only code of law because it deals with subjects as the fountainhead out of which other secondary sources of law spring out. Since it is the direct utterance of God, it is of the highest authority.

The Sunna: The Sunna consists of precepts, actions and sayings of the Prophet Muhammad, not written down in his lifetime but preserved by traditions and handed down by authorised persons. Since God inspired these precepts and practices and as such they have the binding force of law.

Classification of Traditions:

Traditions are classified in three groups according to the nature of their proof. These are:

1. Continuous Traditions: are those enjoy universal publicity and acceptance because they have been narrated by an indefinite number of persons, belonging to different ages and places. Traditions of this class are deeming like a verse of Quran, ensuring absolute certainty as to their authenticity and demand implicit belief.
2. Well-known Traditions: are regarded in law as carrying conviction of their genuineness into a man’s mind, though not absolute certainty likes continuous traditions. These traditions are those have been reported by a limited number of narrators.
3. Isolated Traditions: are not certain like the continuous and do not carry conviction like the well-known traditions but their genuineness in the opinion of generality of jurists is so for guaranteed that it would be justifiable to base a rule of law thereupon. Some jurists of eminence do not recognise isolated traditions as having any authority in law.

Standard of authenticity for a narrator of a tradition (Hadith)

The narration of traditions being a Jurassic act of the kind known as information or testimony, the narrator must fulfil the essential conditions of eligibility, which are laid down with respect to witnesses.

Firstly, the narrator must have understanding so that the report of an infant, a lunatic, or an idiot cannot be accepted.

Secondly, he must possess the power of retention, which implies that he should have properly heard the words of the speaker. He must be able to retain them in his memory, and to reproduce them with accuracy at the time of narration.

Thirdly, he must be a Muslim of righteous conduct. He must be a man who generally in his life and conduct prefers to follow the injunctions of religion, rather than the dictates of desires and passions.

A report by an infidel is regarded as unworthy of reliance by reason of his bias against Islam.

Ijma: is the agreement of the jurists among the followers of Muhammad in a particular age on a question of Law. Thus failing to find answer in Quran and in the Sunna or precedents of the practice of the Prophet, the best guide to the Muslim jurists seems to be the consensus of his disciples. The concept of Ijma rests on the principle that individual jurists may err, but when they agree being several in numbers, they cannot fall into error.

Its authority as a source of law is founded on certain Quranic and traditional texts.

Further the four Sunni Schools of law hold Ijma to be a valid source of laws not only upon the authority of the texts, but also on the unanimity of opinion to that effect among the companions. Ijma is an essential and characteristic of Sunni Jurisprudence.

When is Ijma (consensus of opinion) completed?

According to Hanafis, the Malikis and most of Shafies, an Ijam is completed as soon as the jurists of the age in which the question arouse have COM e to an agreement thereon.

Ijma of one age may be reversed by subsequent Ijma of the same age, in which case the first resolution ceases to have operation. Similarly, Ijma of one age may be repeated by Ijma of a subsequent age. But there is one exception that an Ijma arrived at by the companions of the Prophet is incapable of being repealed after wards.

Legal effects of Ijma:

According to the Hanafi view a decision of Ijma would be of absolute authority in the theological sense, only if it confirms to the following conditions:

• No opinion to the contrary should have been expressed on the question by any of the companions or by other Mujtahids before the formation of Ijma.
• None of the Mujtahids taking part in the decision should have afterwards changed his opinion.
• The decision must be proved as being either universally known, or at least as well known.
• It should be based on an express text of the Quran or a tradition of well-known character.
• It must be regularly constituted.

According to accepted Sunni opinion Muslim Mujtahids or jurists also have a voice in Ijma. The non-Muslims are excluded from such Jurassic deliberation because the power is vested by the text in the Muslims only. Minor and lunatics are excluded on account of there immature or defective understands.

Qualifications of a Mujtahid:

• A jurist must have sound knowledge of the Quran. He must be able not only to read it, but also to understand it and interpret it.
• He should be familiar with the traditions reported from the Prophet, and be able to distinguish authentic from the non-authentic; the universally known tradition form isolated one.
• He must be conversant with the rules and methods of anological deduction.

Qiyas (Analogy): The three sources of law cannot suffice the every growing needs and requirements of a society and to cop with fresh problems jurists have to resort to pure reasoning (Qiyas). The issue that is not possibly solved with the dictates or Quran, Sunna, and Ijma then the principles of analogy is applied to find an answered by deduction. If two deductions happen to be at variance with each other, a jurist is at liberty to accept any of them.

All the four schools of Islamic jurisprudence agree that in matters which have not been provided for by a Quranic or Traditional Text, nor determined by Consensus of Opinion, the law may be deduced from what has been laid down by any of these three authorities through the use of Qiyas (Analogy).

The Analogical deductions must be distinguished from interpretation of a text.

Hence analogy is the process that would not establish a new rule of law but merely help to discover the law from other sources of law.

Conditions of Analogical Deduction:

The following are the conditions of a valid analogical deduction:

1. The law enunciated in the text to which analogy is sought to be applied must not have been intended to be confined to a particular state of facts.
2. The law of the text must not be such that its raison d’ętre cannot be understood by human intellect, nor must it be in the nature of an exception to some general rule.
3. The deduction must not be such as to involve a change in the law embodied in the text.

Istidlal (inferring from) is yet another means to arrive at the authenticity of a law. In fact in the ordinary use Istidlal it means the inferring of one thing from another thing. The Hanafi jurists use the world more or less in this very sense in connection with the rules of interpretation. But with the Malikis and the Shafi’s Istidlal is the name of a distinct method of legal ractificination, not falling in the scope of interpretation or analogy. Istidlal is of three kinds:

1. The expression of the connection existing between one proposition and another without any specific effective causes.
2. Istishabu’l-hal or presumption that a state of things, which is not proved to have ceased, still continues.
3. The authority of revealed laws previous to Islam.

Ijtihad: literally means striving, exerting and as a term of jurisprudence it means the application by a lawyer of all this faculties to the consideration of the authorities of law (that is the Quran, the Traditions and the (Ijma) with a view to find out what in all probability is the law. In other world, Itjthiad is the capacity for making deductions in matters of law in cases to which no express text or a rule already determined by Ijma is applicable.

Criminal Laws according to Islamic Jurisprudence:

When certain primary public rights are violated, the wrong is called crime or offence and it gives rise to certain subsitutiory public rights in the form of punishments. Punishments are divided into two classes: one of which is called Hadd and the other Ta’azir.

Hadd: means measure, limit and in law it means a punishment, the measure of which has been definitely fixed by law. Hadd used to be prevalent in Arabia at the time the promulgation of Islam and the Islamic Law has laid down conditions of a stringent nature under which such punishment may be inflicted. Punishments by way of Hadd are of the following forms:

Death by Stoning, amputation of a limb or limbs, flogging by hundred or eighty strikes. These are prescribed respectively for the following offences:

Whoredom, theft, highway robbery, drunkenness and slander imputing unchasitity.

Ta’azir: In Ta’zir there is no prescribed punishment. The court is allowed discretion both as to the form in which such punishment is to be inflicted and its measure. The objects of Ta’azir are the correction of the offender and the prevention of the recurrence of the crime, and it is left to the discretion of the court to determine, in view of the circumstance of each case, the sentence by which the objects of the law would best be achieved. The range of this form of punishment extends from mere warning to fines, imprisonment and transportation

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