IB World Religions 5.6.1. Interpretation and Authority: Qur'an, Hadith, Sunnah and the Ulama Notes

5.6.1. Interpretation and Authority: Qur'an, Hadith, Sunnah and the Ulama

The Qur'an in ethics

1. Muslims hold that right and wrong are set by Allah and made known through revelation, so ethics is not separate from worship or law. The whole of that guidance is called shari'ah, the way, and Muslims distinguish it from fiqh, the human work of establishing what it requires.
2. The Qur'an is the first source. Around five hundred of its verses bear directly on conduct, and Muslims call these the ayat al-ahkam, the verses of rulings.
3. Its moral instruction is mostly principle rather than code. Verses command justice, honesty and care for orphans and the poor, and forbid killing, theft, usury and false witness, while leaving most of the detail to be worked out.
4. Muslims ground the whole of this in tawhid. Because Allah alone commands, no ruler, custom or majority can make lawful what He forbade, and reformers and traditionalists argue from that same premise.
5. The Qur'an also makes responsibility personal. Every adult of sound mind is mukallaf, morally accountable, and answers individually on the Day of Judgment for what was chosen.

Sunnah as moral precedent

1. The Sunnah, the practice of the Prophet Muhammad, is the second source, and Muslims treat it as the Qur'an's authorised commentary. The Qur'an commands prayer without describing it, and the Sunnah supplies the description.
2. The Sunnah reaches Muslims through hadith, reports of what the Prophet said, did or allowed. Sunni jurists work mainly from the collections of al-Bukhari and Muslim, while Shi'ah jurists add the reports of the imams, above all in al-Kafi.
3. Not every reported act binds. Jurists distinguish what the Prophet did as bearer of revelation from what he did as head of state, as judge, or simply as a man of his own time, and they disagree over particular cases.
4. Reports are also weighed for reliability, so a ruling built on a sahih (sound) report carries more weight than one resting on a da'if (weak) one. Schools set that bar at different heights.
5. The Sunnah's moral force runs wider than specific rules. The Qur'an calls the Prophet an excellent example, and Muslims cite his patience, his treatment of servants and his conduct toward enemies as the standard akhlaq aims at.

Ijma, qiyas and aql

1. Text alone does not settle every question, so Sunni jurists recognise two further sources. Ijma, the consensus of qualified scholars, and qiyas, reasoning by analogy, complete the standard list of four.
2. Ijma carries weight because of a hadith saying the community will not agree upon an error. Scholars dispute what counts, from the agreement of the Prophet's companions to the agreement of every jurist of an age.
3. Qiyas extends a ruling from a case the texts cover to one they do not, by identifying the illah, the operative reason behind the original ruling. Wine is forbidden because it intoxicates, so the ruling reaches other intoxicants.
4. Shi'ah jurisprudence rejects qiyas as guesswork and puts aql, reason, in its place as the fourth source. The Ja'fari school treats what reason establishes with certainty as something Allah has therefore commanded.
5. Sunni schools add further tools of their own. Istihsan (juristic preference), maslahah (public benefit) and urf (local custom) are accepted in different measure by the Hanafi, Maliki and other schools.
6. The result is regulated disagreement. Ikhtilaf, difference among qualified scholars, is treated as normal, and a saying much quoted in the schools calls that difference a mercy.

The five categories of action

1. Muslim ethics sorts every act into one of five categories, the ahkam al-khamsa. They are fard or wajib (obligatory), mandub (recommended), mubah (neutral), makruh (discouraged) and haram (forbidden).
2. Only the two ends bind strictly. Doing the obligatory earns reward and leaving it earns blame, while the discouraged is disliked without being sinful and the recommended is praised without being required.
3. The neutral middle is deliberately wide. Jurists hold that things are permitted unless a text forbids them, which leaves most of ordinary life outside the reach of any specific ruling.
4. Halal and haram are the everyday words for the permitted and the forbidden, and Muslims apply them to food, money, work and speech alike.
5. Niyyah, intention, decides the moral weight of what sits in the middle. A hadith placed first in al-Bukhari's collection says actions are judged by intentions, so an ordinary act done for Allah becomes worship.
6. Necessity relaxes the scale. Darura permits the forbidden when life is at stake, which is why a starving Muslim may eat forbidden food, and jurists confine the relaxation to the extent of the need.

Ulama, fatwa and ijtihad

1. Islam has no priesthood and no ordaining church, and interpretation is still not open to everyone. Authority rests with the ulama, scholars recognised for training in Arabic, Qur'an, hadith and usul al-fiqh, the roots of jurisprudence.
2. Ijtihad is the disciplined effort to derive a ruling from the sources, and only a qualified scholar may attempt it. Taqlid is the following of such a scholar by everyone else, and most Muslims live by it.
3. A mufti answers questions by issuing a fatwa, a scholarly opinion. A qadi is a judge whose ruling binds the parties before him, and the two are often confused by outsiders.
4. Sunni authority is spread across institutions. Al-Azhar in Cairo, Deoband in India, national fatwa councils and bodies such as the European Council for Fatwa and Research all speak, and none can silence the others.
5. Twelver Shi'ah authority is more concentrated. A believer chooses a living marja al-taqlid, a source of emulation among the senior scholars of Najaf and Qom, and follows his rulings for as long as he lives.
6. The internet has widened the field again. Fatwas are now asked for and given online, which scholars welcome for its reach and criticise because the questioner's circumstances, which a mufti is meant to weigh, drop out of sight.

Maqasid and new questions

1. Alongside rule-by-rule reasoning, jurists ask what the law is for. Al-Ghazali set out five maqasid al-shari'ah, aims of the law: the protection of religion, life, intellect, lineage and property.
2. The aims give a way of testing conclusions in cases the texts never met, and maslahah, public benefit, works alongside them. If a ruling would destroy one of the five, jurists take that as a sign the reasoning has gone wrong.
3. Contemporary scholars differ over how far this may be pushed. Reformists treat the aims as the heart of the law and read specific rules in their light, while traditionalists warn that aims cut loose from texts become whatever an age already wanted.
4. Medical questions show the machinery working. Vaccines containing pork-derived gelatine have been permitted by most fatwa bodies on grounds of necessity and chemical transformation, while some scholars still advise avoidance where an alternative exists.
5. The same apparatus now handles questions about the environment, technology and new forms of work. What holds the tradition together is not agreement on answers but a shared account of where answers must come from.