Conclusions

Based on his Ashtari commitments to divine omnipotence and transcendence, al-Juwayni affirms that only from Revelation people are able to gain knowl­edge about the way to lead a god-pleasing life.

Al-Juwayni’s commitment to scriptural universalism means that all human acts potentially fall under their culpability. His expansive interpretation of command and prohibition extends to his understanding of analogy. To ensure that one complies with God’s directives, one has to scrutinize the meaning of Revelation in order to apply it in analogy to any place it could possibly cover. A ruling’s ratio legis can be identified in a variety of ways. By linguistic implica­tion, i.e., when one almost intuitively understands the original ruling to apply elsewhere on account of it covering a broad semantic field, such as subsuming ‘pouring urine’ under the prohibition to ‘urinate’ in standing water used for ritual ablution or ‘hitting’ parents under the deterrence to ‘not say fie.’ When the analogous instance is not already implied in the source case, then its ratio legis can be identifiable by looking at whether it is suggestive and suitable for the case. Suitability, on the one hand, has a linguistic dimension. One’s lan­guage sensibilities suggest that a characteristic is suitable to be the determin­ing factor for the ruling of an act. On the other hand, suitability is loosely tied to the objective that the ruling aims at, which is known from its context. Here, one may say, the purpose of rulings is to lead to a good outcome. Although al-Juwayni does not explicitly connect suitability to God's legislative intent or defines it as bringing about maslaha, as later seen in al-Ghazali's thought, his expansive view of the ratio legis is congruent with the motive-model of the ratio legis.

While al-Juwayni does not define explicitly the purpose of the Law to attain maslaha, he uses the terms istislah and maslaha in the sense of bringing about something beneficial, namely in this world. Moreover, he operationalizes the objective behind divine rulings as ratio legis, justifying analogy to matters that preserve people's necessities and needs. In these cases, the ratio legis is not a narrowly defined sign or characteristic but pertains to the purpose of the divine Law to bring about maslaha for human beings in this world. Something that is necessary for the good order of society is a maslaha. e.g., requiring retal­iation for murder with a blunt weapon, as are matters that are needed and avert harm, like leasing. In contrast to ^tAbd al-Jabbar and al-Basri, who con­ceive of maslaha only in terms of otherworldly consequences, al-Juwayni, like al-Dabbusi, moves maslaha into the earthly realm. God's Law is laid down for the ‘good' and the beneficial consequences (maslaha) that its rulings attain in this world. How to resolve conceptually the relationship between maslaha and the purpose of the Law, however, is a task left to al-Ghazali.

Al-Juwayni's expansive understanding of the meanings of the divine Law and their use as rationes legis in analogy is a result of his commitment to God's transcendence, his rejection of rational assessment of norms, and his claim to an all-encompassing divine Law. Since human rationality is unable to supply normativity, the only stable, all-encompassing assessment of people's conduct that affects their salvation has to come from the Law. Total reliance on Scripture means that one has to interpret the textual evidence as broadly as possible in order to ensure that one does not miss anything that possibly could be blame­worthy. The utter transcendence of God leaves the conduct of His servants at the mercy of their own interpretation of His divine speech, yet also empowers them,^[810] or rather the ^culama^, as experts of the Law, to find interpretations that they deem plausible within the confines of their mundane experiences. Given the relativity of experiences, their interpretations, however, remain within the realm of probability, thereby, at least in theory, allowing for a broad range of possible options. In comparison to our other jurists, al-Juwayni clearly expands the ability of the religious Law to order society, ushering in the dominance of explaining and extending the Law in analogy based on its beneficial purposes.

the religious scholars ('ulama'} (cf. Wael B. Hallaq, “Was the Gate of Ijtihad Closed?” InternationalJournal of Middle East Studies 16 [1994], 13-14).