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Concept
Sources of Sharia
Summary
Various sources of Islamic Laws are used by Islamic jurisprudence to elaborate the body of Islamic law. In Sunni Islam, the scriptural sources of traditional jurisprudence are the Holy Qur'an, believed by Muslims to be the direct and unaltered word of God, and the Sunnah, consisting of words and actions attributed to the Islamic prophet Muhammad in the hadith literature. In Shi'ite jurisprudence, the notion of Sunnah is extended to include traditions of the Imams.
Since legally relevant material found in Islamic scriptures did not directly address all the questions pertaining to Sharia that arose in Muslim communities, Islamic jurists developed additional methods for deriving legal rulings. According to Sunni schools of law, secondary sources of Islamic law are consensus, the exact nature of which bears no consensus itself; analogical reason; seeking the public interest; juristic discretion; the rulings of the first generation of Muslims; and local customs. Hanafi school frequently relies on analogical deduction and independent reasoning, and Maliki and Hanbali generally use the Hadith instead. Shafi'i school uses Sunnah more than Hanafi and analogy more than two others. Among Shia, Usuli school of Ja'fari jurisprudence uses four sources, which are Qur'an, Sunnah, consensus and the intellect. They use consensus under special conditions and rely on the intellect to find general principles based on the Qur'an and Sunnah, and use the principles of jurisprudence as a methodology to interpret the Qur'an and Sunnah in different circumstances. Akhbari Ja'faris rely more on scriptural sources and reject ijtihad. According to Momen, despite considerable differences in the principles of jurisprudence between Shia and the four Sunni schools of law, there are fewer differences in the practical application of jurisprudence to ritual observances and social transactions.
The Qur'an is the first and most important source of Islamic law.
Official source
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