ভূমিকা

Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books Fixed and Variable Aspects of Islamic Legislation Sources of Islamic Legislation It is unanimously accepted that the Holy Qur'an and the pure sunna are the sources of legislation and the custodians of Islamic thought and knowledge.

Imam Muhammad Baqir (a.s.), the master and authority of the jurists and one of the Imams of the Prophet's household from whom Allah removed all filth and purified with the utmost purification, summarized this belief in the following words: "Surely Allah, Blessed and Exalted, is He Who did not leave out any matter of which the community stands in need, but He revealed it in His Book and explained it to His Apostle (s.a.w.). And He assigned a limit to everything and a proof indicating it.

And He specified a punishment for whoever transgresses the limit." The Imams of Ahl-lul-Bait (a.s.) have, indeed, enriched Islamic legislation with their expositions and elaborations of the Book and the Prophetic tradition. This exposition was a real continuation of Shari`a laws, so it is part of the sunna.

The great jurist Shahid Sayyid Muhammad Baqir Sadr described this fact in these words: "Thus it becomes clear that changing the rules of the Shari`a, through abrogation, is also one of the factors that bring about conflict originating from this factor, and only affects the stipulation emanating from the Prophet (s.a.w.) not those from the Imams (a.s.).

This is so because the period of legislation ended with the close of the Prophetic era and the narrations that emanated from the Infallible Imams (a.s.) were only an elaboration on the Prophet's legislations." Since the Book and the sunna together are the sources of Islamic legislation, the two other sources i.e., intellect and consensus (ijma') are secondary sources serving as ways to discover the legislation and not, themselves, legislators.

The intellect, as a source of legislation, is defined as "an issue perceptible to the intellect while it is able to deduce a Shari`a rule from it. An example of these issues is the intellectual proposition that enjoining a thing entails enjoining its prerequisities (muqaddimat).

Consensus (ijma) has been defined by the Shi'a Imamiyya School as: "The consensus of scholars with legal opinions from among the preceding jurists of the period of occultation, on a certain ruling, while the verbal source specifying the ruling remains unknown.