Usul and Fiqh Represent the Theory and its Application We...

Usul and Fiqh Represent the Theory and its Application We are afraid that we may have given you a wrong idea when we said that he, who is attempting to carry out deduction must study in ‘Ilm’ul Usul , the common elements and define them and then take the particular elements from ‘Ilm’ul Fiqh , so that he may complete the process of deduction.

This is because some may thereby feel that once we have studied the common elements in the process of deduction from ‘Ilm’ul Usul and we come to know, for example, the validity of al-Khabar and of al-Zuhur al-'Urfi as proofs, as well as other such common elements, there would be no need of any further intellectual exertion on our part, and that we would need nothing further after possessing those elements, than to merely extract the traditions and valid texts where they are located just as one extracts the date of the Battle of Khaybar or the reports about the Hejra (migration of the Holy Prophet (p) from Mecca to Medina) from the biographies of the Prophet.

Thus the job of the jurist in ‘Ilm’ul Fiqh would be confined to merely searching for the particular elements from the traditions and valid texts, so that these may be added to the common elements, and he may derive from them the laws of the Shari’ah . And this would be an easy and simple task in view of its needing no intellectual effort.

The result of it would be that the intellectual effort exerted by the Mujtahid in the process of deduction would be represented by laying down the common elements and their systematization and study in ‘Ilm’ul Usul , and not in gathering the particular elements from the valid texts, traditions and other sources in ‘Ilm’ul Fiqh .

The above conception is, to a large extent, misleading because the Mujtahid, after studying the common elements in the process of deduction and defining them in ‘Ilm’ul Usul , is not contented with blindly collecting the particular elements from the books of traditions (a Hadith ) and narrations, for example; but it remains for him, in ‘Ilm’ul Fiqh , to apply those common elements and their general theory to the particular elements; and application is an important intellectual task which naturally requires careful study and thorough examination.

The intellectual effort spent in ‘Ilm’ul Usul in studying the common elements and formulating their general theory cannot dispense with the fresh effort required for drawing conclusion.