2021 Volume 2 Pages 66-77
The Shariah or Islamic Law achieved a spectacular resurgence in the 1970s after manydecades of decline from being the dominant legal system of the traditional Islamicworld to becoming partial subordinate legal fragments under the secular modern statesystem. The Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979 and the beginning of non-Ribawi（Interest-free）banking at a commercial level in 1975 were major manifestations of thereturn of Islamic Law in political, economic and social, not to mention religious,dimensions of Muslim societies. In the recent decades, scholarship on Shariah / IslamicLaw has been required to go beyond historical studies to integrate the traditional withcontemporary legal dynamism in Muslim society. In other words, in order tounderstand the Islamic world and Muslims properly, a deeper and more comprehensiveresearch on Shariah and its inherent contents are necessary. To realize this objective,the current research project is focusing on not only ‘Ilm al-Fiqh, that is, the knowledgeof the body of Islamic rules, but also ‘Ilm Uṣūl al-Fiqh, Islamic Jurisprudence, orTheories and Principles of Legal Interpretation in Shariah, by which the Jurists bringsolutions to problems of Muslim societies based on the interpretation of thefundamental texts of Islam.So far, the project has concentrated on clarifying how and when the so-called “FiveCategories of Islamic Rules” were clearly formulated while Islamic Jurisprudence itselfwas being systematized. Our investigation has found that the five major theologianjurists,namely, Qāḍī ‘Abd al-Jabbār, Abū al-Ḥusayn al-Baṣrī, Qāḍī al-Bāqillānī, Imāmal-Ḥaramayn al-Juwaynī, and Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī, from the 4th to 6th centuries A.H. /10th to 12th centuries C.E., had contributed greatly to the systematization of thisimportant branch of Islamic sciences. Supported by evidences from the historicalsources, we have also argued that the category of mubāḥ, the permitted and free tochoose, was included in the “Five Categories” along with the four categories of taklīf, orof the divine order and prohibition, in order to make the Islamic rules comprehensivefor all and any issue in Muslim societies. Based on these investigations and findings,we can also envision the Shariah as a system of responsibilities for human actions,rather than a system of religious duties or obligations.
