Conclusions
Al-Dabbusi’s legal thought, as articulated in his Taqwlm al-adilla, is deeply influenced by his theological commitment to God’s wisdom in creation. God puts everything in the place He deems it wise to be.
The divine wisdom in creation has, as al-Dabbusi calls it, aJci1Lda - a positive outcome, either in form of attaining benefit and averting harm for His creatures or as something by which to recognize God’s existence and wise design. This divine wisdom permeates all of creation, and manifests itself in human reason and in language. Displaying an empirical approach to knowledge, the faculty of reason is for al-Dabbusi the tool to grasp the wisdom of God’s design and, hence, know not only about the existence of God, humanity’s state of servitude toward the Creator, but also that the world is created for humankind’s maslaha and benefit. The way language is established reflects this wisdom. Words and expressions are intimately tied to their meaning, which, when aligned, achieve the objective (Ja1Lda) of what they are established for. Sale is for making profit, speaking is for attaining knowledge. Humans, one may say, by learning the language, intuitively know the meaning of an act and, by extension, its ethico-legal status. Hence, whether an act is good or bad is rationally recognizable from its meaning. An act that corresponds to the wisdom behind its meaning is good; an act that contravenes it is bad. For al-Dabbusi, there is almost a natural understanding of ethical norms based on the wise divine design. When it comes to rationally discernable ethical norms, al-Dabbusi displays a straightforward consequentialist perspective. People's motivation to act is consequentialist. A good act is performed in order to reap its positive worldly consequences. What leads to benefit and maslaha is good, what does not is bad. Noteworthy is that al-Dabbusi does not reserve the term maslaha for otherworldly benefit, but applies it to beneficial outcomes in this world. In comparison with tAbd al-Jabbar and al-Basri, we see in al-Dabbusi's work a shift in the semantic field of maslaha toward the mundane sphere.Moreover, reason allows to assign also a legal status to acts. Whatever serves its purpose, i.e., is done wisely, is permissible and whatever fails to align with God's wisdom to attain benefit and avert harm is prohibited. Al-Dabbusi constructs rational normativity as a binary. The foundation of the teleological evaluation is whether an act corresponds to God's wisdom or is contrary to it, in particular with regard to bad/prohibited acts. Ignorance is prohibited because it is contrary to God's wisdom of creating humans with reason. A pointless act fails to achieve the purpose of the wisdom that any action should attain more benefit than effort involved and, hence, is bad and prohibited.
Underlying al-Dabbusi's position that the base line (asl) of actions is their permissibility is the knowledge that the world is created for humans to benefit. What is a right in their favor, he says, cannot be an obligation upon them.[550] Obligation can only be known from God's command. Revelation informs how to worship God. Absent of bad consequences or being contrary to the rationally discernable wisdom, God has to inform people that the status of an act has changed. With Revelation, ethical and legal normativity receives a stronger deontological bend. While divine reward or punishment in the Afterlife may prompt to action, al-Dabbusi does not concern himself with elaborating on the otherworldly dimension. The rational knowledge that humans are in servitude to the divine obliges them to obey His commands and prohibitions. Religious normativity is derived from divine command and prohibition and the meanings connected to them. The knowledge that God is wise necessarily means that He commands only what He deems good to exist, and, thus, it is obligatory upon humans to act upon the commanded. God only prohibits what is bad and should not be done.
Although al-Dabbusi deems it rationally possible to assess the status of acts based on their inherent meaning, this is always relative. Only by taking the larger semantic context into account - be that rationally assessed consequences or divinely provided information - can the status of an act be correctly determined. When the act of exaltation is not appropriate, its assessment changes from being a good and permissible act to being bad and prohibited. In addition, meanings that are contextually connected to a religious ruling are affected by the divine command. In the context of prayer, the permissible act of washing becomes obligatory to perform as ritual ablution. This relativity and emphasis on context, as we will see in the following chapters, is where al-Dabbusi shows affinities to Ashtarism.
The primacy of Revelation also comes through in al-Dabbusi’s conceptualization of legal analogy. Qiyas is a way to generalize the divine commands and prohibitions to those instances not directly addressed in Scripture. This is done linguistically by determining the efficacy (ta1thlr) of a ruling’s ratio legis. Contrary to al-Basri, al-Dabbusi does not determine efficacy on account of co-presence and co-absence between the characteristic and the ruling. He instead defines efficacy as the ratio legis displaying appropriateness (salah), relevance (mula,ama), consistency (muwafaqa), and propriety (cadala) for its ruling. Al-Dabbusi understands these terms as something - a characteristic or attribute - that was recognized by the early Muslim community as having bearing on the meaning of the ruling and how they applied it outside of the revealed instances, without there being contradictory evidence. The way he understands ‘efficacy’ (ta1thlr) is clearly different from his fellow Hanafi al-Basri. It is closer to what we find in the concept of suitability (munasaba) as articulated by al-Juwayni and later al-Ghazali.
Al-Dabbusi’s examples clearly exhibit that rulings have a beneficial purpose, which he often calls maslaha and fa,ida. While the ratio legis is primarily identified by its ‘efficacy’, on the meta-level rulings are laid down in accordance to God’s wisdom. This wisdom, moreover, is found in that divine rulings bring about maslaha and benefit for humankind in this world. In comparison with tAbd al-Jabbar and al-Basri, one notices a marked semantic expansion in the concept of maslaha. God’s Law aims at the existence of mundane maslahas and at averting harm in this world. Acts commanded by Revelation are assessed as good not only because God commands them, but also because they have tangible beneficial effects. How God’s wisdom is reflected in the rilla of rulings is still rather undeveloped. Al-Dabbusi does not take the further step to identify rationes legis by the mundane beneficial consequences of their rulings. Although he neither articulates nor operationalizes the divine legislative intent in identifying the correct ratio legis of rulings, in contrast to Abd al-Jabbar and al-Basri, al-Dabbusi’s work conceptually represents a step toward understanding the ratio legis in terms of the ethical content of divine rulings.