Conclusion

This chapter has outlined how the Qur’an and the Prophet Muhammad’s Sunnah/Hadith were used as Islam’s primary legal sources. It has given specific examples that illustrate some of the intricacies of each of these two sources as well as the relationship between them as complementary legal sources.

This leads us to a crucial aspect of Islamic law, and one that is intimately related to the hermeneutics of the Qur’an and the Hadith as legal sources. Most Muslim jurists believe that the results of their engagement with these textual sources are probable rather than certain. This understanding has resulted in much tolerance to differing readings of these texts and of conflicting legal views, as long as they ensue from a studious and informed effort to work out the intended meanings of these texts. As Weiss has put it, ‘a tentatively constructed rule has the full force of a bona fide rule of law if the exegesis upon which it is based is diligent and conscientious’.²⁷ Muslim jurists, however, were not nihilists; they did believe that if language is used soundly (that is, according to its conventions) in a certain text, then this text has a basic meaning.

This notwithstanding, a minority view in Islam’s legal history has held that if the conven­tions ofthe language ofcommunication are stringently followed (presumed to be the case with the Qur’an and the Hadith), then we can use these same conventions to understand the mean­ing intended by the speaker (God, directly or indirectly in both textual sources of Islamic law) with complete certainty. In this view, two readings of the same text (again assuming that the speaker uses language soundly, in the sense of following its conventions) cannot be simultane­ously valid. This view was best presented by scholars of the Zahiri madhhab, a school of Islamic law whose hermeneutics is generally believed to be ‘literalist’, a notion that recent scholarship finds problematic. Consistent with this approach to language is the Zahiri conviction that traditions transmitted by single transmitters still establish absolute or apodictic knowledge provided that their reliability is established. This belief in the necessity of certainty is organ­ically linked to some theological views, particularly the notion that it contradicts divine jus­tice to hold believers accountable for not following texts with inherently uncertain meaning.

Notes

1 See, for instance, Jonathan A. C. Brown, Hadith: Muhammad’s Legacy in the Medieval and Modern World (Oxford: Oneworld, 2009), 150—1, and Daniel W. Brown, Rethinking Traditions in Modern Islamic Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 43—4. See also Ahmad Hasan, ‘The Sources of Islamic Law', Islamic Studies 7, no. 2 (1968): 176, and Bernard Weiss, ‘The Primacy of Revelation in Classical Islamic Legal Theory as Expounded by Sayf al-Din al-Amidi', Studia Islamica 59 (1984): 83—4.

2 On the view that disagreement was always on the interpretation of sources rather than on the ques­tion of whether to accept them in principle, see Hasan, ‘The Sources of Islamic Law', 176.

3 For this, see, for instance, Sherman Jackson, ‘Fiction and Formalism: Toward a Functional Analysis of Usul al-Fiqh', in Studies in Islamic Legal Theory, ed. Bernard G. Weiss (Leiden: Brill, 2002).

4 Bernard G. Weiss, The Searchfor God’s Law: Islamic Jurisprudence in the Writings of Sayf al-Din al-Amidi (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2010), 87.

5 Ibid., 94.

6 For the views of medieval Sunni jurists on the issues of the scope of terms and denotation of the imperative, see Weiss, The Search, 382—439 and 322—81, respectively. See also Aron Zysow, The Economy of Certainty: An Introduction to the Typology of Islamic Legal Theory (Atlanta, GA: Lockwood Press, 2013), 60-96.

7 The rather challenging term maruf can be and is translated variously according to each translator's understanding of its meaning. Translations include ‘in kindness', ‘lawfully' and ‘equitably'. This in itself is an example of a Qur’anic term that has been interpreted in various ways by Muslim exegetes and one that has not been duly explained in any Prophetic tradition.

8 The ‘waiting period' is usually three menstrual periods, during which the divorce is not final and husbands can, unilaterally, ‘return' to their wives.

9 Muslim exegetes mention a reading of the verse that is obviously not based on the reports about the causes of revelation of this verse. According to this, the addressee in the verse is one. He is the ex-husband of the woman and happens to be her guardian at the same time (e.g. her cousin). What the verse says is that if he divorces her he should not (cannot?) prevent her from marrying another person so as to, according to the jurists offering this reading, inherit her property should she die. We may wonder, of course, why the Qur’an calls that other person a husband when he is not yet married to the woman. No wonder that this reading has not fared well in Islamic jurisprudence.

10 This subject, we may note, has a direct link to the subject of the occasions of revelation. Crucial to the notion of abrogation is the chronology of revelation, knowledge of which requires knowl­edge of when each verse was revealed, for which reports about the occasions of revelation may be helpful.

11 It must be added here that Q. 2:185 addresses the question of the sick and of travellers. According to this verse, they should make up the missed fasting days at a later time.

12 For more on this subject, see A. J. Wensinck's discussion of the ‘juridical aspects' of ‘khamr' (intox­icating beverages) in Encyclopedia of Islam, 2nd edn (1960-2007), vol. 4, 994-7.

13 Ibn Qudama al-Maqdisi, Al-Mughni, vol. 12 (Riyadh: Dar 'Alam al-Kutub, 1997), 415-72.

14 Ibid., 427.

15 Ibid., 426-39.

16 The reason why this belief changes the way their act is interpreted will be explained later.

17 Ibid., 452.

18 Ibid., 464.

19 Ibid., 465.

20 Ibid., 467.

21 Ibid., 471.

22 Ibid., 442.

23 Ibid., 443.

24 Ibid., 448.

25 Ibid., 445.

26 Ibid., 446-7.

27 Weiss, ‘The Primacy of Revelation in the Classical Islamic Legal Theory as Expounded by Sayf al-Din al-Amidi’, 96-7.

Select bibliography and further reading

Brown, Jonathan A. C. Hadith: Muhammad’s Legacy in the Medieval and Modern World (Oxford: Oneworld, 2009).

Burton, John. An Introduction to the Hadith (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1994).

Gleave, Robert. Islam and Literalism: Literal Meaning and Interpretation in Islamic Legal Theory (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013).

Hallaq, Wael B. The Origins and Evolution of Islamic Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).

Ibn Qudama al-Maqdisi. Al-Mughni (Riyadh: Dar Alam al-Kutub, 1997).

Mattson, Ingrid. The Story of the Qur'an: Its History and Place in Muslim Life (Oxford: Blackwell Pub­lishing, 2008).

Motzki, Harald (ed.). Hadith: Origins and Development (Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate Publications, 2004).

Motzki, Harald. Analysing Muslim Traditions: Studies in Legal, Exegetical, and Maghazi Hadith (Leiden: Brill, 2012).

Osman, Amr. The Zahiri Madhhab (3rd/9th—10th/16th Century): A Textualist Theory of Islamic Law (Leiden: Brill, 2014).

Peters, Rudolph, and Bearman, Peri. The Ashgate Research Companion to Islamic Law (Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate Publications, 2014).

Rippin, Andrew, and Knappert, Jan (ed. and trans.). Textual Sources for the Study of Islam (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1986).

Saeed, Abdullah. Interpreting the Qur'an: Towards a Contemporary Approach (London and New York: Routledge, 2006).

Weiss, Bernard G. ‘The Primacy of Revelation in the Classical Islamic Legal Theory as Expounded by Sayf al-Dfn al-Amidf’. Studia Islamica, 59 (1984): 79—109.

Weiss, Bernard G. The Search for God’s Law: Islamic Jurisprudence in the Writings of Sayf al-Din al-Amidi (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2010).

Zysow, Aron. The Economy of Certainty: An Introduction to the Typology of Islamic Legal Theory (Exeter: Lockwood Press, 2013).