limijt

One day an idea occurred to me when I was lecturing at the university of civil engineering about how to make compactions roads, we have what we call protector test, in which we sample and test soil used in fills in embankments. In this test we exclude and interpolate we have x and y. a hyperbole. We have a basic risk. We plot a curve and we put a line on the top of it. The line is the upper limit. Then I thought of the concept of “god limits” (hdud’illah). I returned here to the office and opened the Qur’an. Just as in mathematics we have five ways of representing limits. I found five cases in which the notion of God’s limit occurred. What they have in common is the idea that god has not set down the exact rules of conduct. But only the limits within which societies can create their own rules and laws, I have written about ideas of integrity (al-istiqama) and universal moral or ethical codes. The ideas was at first only a footnote in my last chapter, but I saw that it applied to my argument, so I corrected everything that in wrote about hudud’llah in the book in order to be consistent. Then I considered my argument to be sound.

Islamic legal theory came to recognize a variety of sources and methods from and through which the law might be derived. Those sources from which the law may be derived are the Quran and Sunna or example of the prophet. Both of which provide the subject matter of the law. Those sources through which the law may be derived represent either methods of legal reasoning and interpretation or the sanctioning instrument of consensus (ijma’), primacy of place within the hierarchy of all these sources is given to the Quran, followed by the sunna which. Though second in order of importance, provide the greatest bulk of material from which the law was derived. The third is consensus, a sanctioning instrument whereby the creative jurist, the mujtahids, representing the community at large, are considered to have reached an agreement, known retrospectively, on a technical legal ruling, thereby rendering it as conclusive and as epistemologically certain as any verse of the Quran and the sunna of the prophet . The certitude bestowed upon the case of law renders that case, together with its ruling, a material source on the basis of which a similar legal case may be solved. The mujtahids, authorized by divine revelation, are thus capable of transforming a ruling reached through human legal reasoning into the textual source by the very fact of their agreement on its validity. The processes of reasoning involved therein, subsumed under the rubric of qiyas, represent the fourth source of the law. Alternative methods of reasoning based on considerations of juristic preference (istihsan’) or public welfare and interest (istihlah) were of limited validity and was not infrequently the subject of controversy.

The two of modern reform we have identified, it is the religious utilitarianisms that succeeded in having their ideas implemented on the practical level,

Muhammad shahrur, whose recent work alkitab wal-quran advances some of the most controversial ideas in the middle east today, it is not difficult to see that his formal training as an engineer had great impact on his mode of analysis, in that in “re-reading” the Quran and the suna he draws heavily on the natural sciences, particularly mathematics and physics. His, then is unique contribution to the reinterpretation of the Quran and the Sunna in particular, and to law as a comprehensive system in general. Although shahrur modestly claims that his work represents no more than a “contemporary reading” of the Quran, being in no way an exegetical or a legal work. It is impressive in that it offers both depth and range, virtually unparalleled in modern writings on the subject

Shahrur maintains that the Quran having been constantly “preserved” by divine power, is as much the property of later generations as that of earlier or even the earliest generations, since each generation bestows on the Quran an interpretation emanating from the particular reality in which it lives, we in the twentieth century, are entitled to confer on the “remembrance” an interpretation that reflects the condition of this age. In this sense, modern Muslim is more qualified to understand the Quran for their own purposes and exigencies than earlier generations were. Thus, traditional interpretation of the Quran must not be taken as binding upon modern Muslim societies. But shahrur goes further: modern Muslims are better equipped to understand the meaning of revelation than their classical and medieval counterparts because they are far more “cultured”. The Quran speaks of the Bedouins as having been “more hard is disbelief and hypocrisy “than the other Arabs who possessed higher culture and civilization, and “likely to be ignorant of the limit which god revealed to his messenger “(9:97). the Quranic criterion of a proper comprehension of the revealed text is thus a level of high culture which the Bedouins were thought to have lacked. Since Muslims in the twentieth century enjoy a higher level of culture and scientific knowledge than their predecessors, then they are better equipped to understand revelation than these predecessors were.

Having arrogated to his generation the superior right to interpret the remembrance, shahrur goes on the draw a crucial distinction between what he calls the Quran and the book (these two words constituting the title of his work). This distinction directly emanates from yet another distinction, namely between the function of Muhammad received a body of information having to do with prophecy, religion and the like, as messenger and as prophet. As prophet Muhammad received a body of information having to do with prophecy, religion and the like. As messenger, he was the recipient of a corpus of legal instructions, in addition to that information he received as a prophet. The function of the prophet then is religious, whereas that of the messenger is legal. Now prophetic information is textually ambiguous, capable of varying interpretation. This is the Quran. On the other hand, the legal subject matter is univocal, but nevertheless capable of being subjected to ijtihad. This is the book.

In order to understand the legal message, it is necessary to draw another fundamental distinction between two contradictory, yet complementary attributes found in the book, these are straightness (istiqama) and curvature (hanifiyya). It is to be noted here that our English rendering of these two Arabic terms does not represent their immediate meaning as they have been traditionally understood but rather as shahrur perceives them by means of his own linguistics derivation. Listing numerous quranic verses in which these two terms occur, he concludes that the meaning of hanifiyya is derivation from straight path or from linearity. The opposite of hanifiyya is istiqoma, the letter being the quality of being straight or of following a linear path.

Both of these attributes are integral to the message, coexisting in a symbiotic relationship. Curvature is a natural quality, meaning that it is intrinsic to human nature as it exists in the material, objective world. Physical laws show that things do not occur in a linear, but rather in a non – linear, fashion. Motion in the natural world, for instance, is characterized by curves. All things, from minute electrons to the colossal galaxies, move in curves. In line with this perception of nature, curvature in law is seen as representing the quality of non linear movement, where customs, habits and social traditions tend to exist in harmony with the needs of particular societies, needs that tend to change from one society to another and, diachronically, within a society. It is for the purpose of controlling and restraining this change that “straightness” becomes indispensable for maintaining a legal order, but unlike curvature, straightness is not natural quality. Rather it is divinely ordained in order for it to coexist with curvature and to partake in the ordering of human societies. Thus curvature stand in need of straightness, as attested in 1:5 where man is represented as seeking the guidance of god by imploring him to “show us the straight path” on the other hand, there exists no quranic verse, shahrur maintains, in which man is portrayed as seeking curvature (hanifiyya) because curvature is pre-existing in the natural order.

The relationship between curvature and straightness is thus wholly dialectical, where constants and permutations are intertwined. This dialectic is significant because it indicates that the law is adaptable to all times and places (salih li-kulli zaman wa-makan). But what is the form of straightness that god revealed in order to complement curvature? Here shahrur advances the crux of his theory, which we may call the theory of limits (hudud). Ultimately, then man moves in curvature within these limits which represent straightness.

The theory of limits may be describes as follows ; it is the divine decree, expressed in the book and the sunna, which sets a lower and an upper limit for all human actions; the lower limit represents the minimum required by the law in a particular case, and the upper limit the maximum. Just as nothing short of the minimum is legally admissible, so nothing above the maximum may be deemed lawful. Once these limits are transcended, penalties become warrantable, in proportion to the violation committed.

Shahrur distinguishes six types of limits, the first of which is the lower

Fifth is the type in which the curvature moves between the lower and the upper limit but touches neither. The sexual relationship between men and women exemplify this type. Beginning with a point above the lower limit. Where the sexes are not to touch each other. The curvature moves upward in the direction of the upper limit where they come close to committing adultery but do not.

The early and medieval legist went wrong because they did not understand the significance of the theory of limits; what is more, they even did not realize its existence. Shahrur borrows the metaphor of a soccer match, where the teams play within and between the borders of the field not at the borders. The traditional jurists played, so to speak, at the borders and left the entire field intact.

We have already noted that shahrur’s theory of limit draws as much upon the sunna as the book. The former, in his view, represents a methodological model for legislation. Put differently, like the book, it does not necessarily provide for specific and concrete cases of legislation but rather it furnishes the methodological path (minhaj) for constructing a system of law. Those parts of the sunna that are conductive to creating the methodology and theory of limit will be taken as highly relevant. Those that do not will be taken as exclusive to the private life of the prophet and as binding upon no one but those who lived in his age.

Aside from the book and those provisions from the sunna relevant to the theory of limits. Shahrur rejects as obsolete and oppressive, for he asks, how could an analogy be drawn between the seventh and the twentieth centuries? indeed it is a credit to shahrur that he was able to dispense of qiyas by providing a substitute to it in the theory of limits. Similarly he was able to render superfluous the notion of consensus because his epistemology does not by definition require the element of certainty law in his view is ever changing as long as it moves between the limits and not beyond them. The only concept of consensus he admits is one where the majority of citizen vote on a proposed law, and once the proposal passes for law, they become committed to its implementation. The traditional notion of consensus , shahrur insists is imaginary (wahmi) and is in no way binding upon the Muslims of the modern age.