THE SHIFTING PARADIGM OF THE CLASSICAL THEORY OF MAQASID AL-SHARI’AH TO THE MODERN THEORY

This item is published by Universitas Islam Negeri Sunan Ampel Surabaya

Sanuri, Sanuri (2012) THE SHIFTING PARADIGM OF THE CLASSICAL THEORY OF MAQASID AL-SHARI’AH TO THE MODERN THEORY. In: Conference Proceedings: Annual International Conference on Islamic Studies (AICIS) XII, 5 – 8 November 2012, Surabaya – Indonesia.

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Abstract

This paper highlights the methodological critique of the contemporary Muslim scholars concerning with the development of epistemological paradigm of Islamic law, particularly the concept of classical maqasid al shari’ ah/maslahah (purposes or intents of Islamic law), which is regarded to be inadequate to cover the sophisticated issues. They view that the methodological establishment of Islamic law is frequently trapped within the textual, exclusive, and normative understanding for long period of the time. As a result, flexibility and elasticity of Islamic law are not able to engage in the dialogue to modern values, particularly related to issues of hudud, human rights, public law, gender, and Muslim as a member of global citizenship. They argue that the understanding of the classical maslahah theory should be dialogued and related to social sciences, social changes, universal values and those of modernity. Therefore, this paper focuses on the concept of maqasid al-shari’ah within the perspective of the contemporary Muslim scholars namely Abdullah Saeed and Jasser Auda to view: (1) whether they tend to ground on the classical theory of maqasid al-shari’ah or they explore entirely their own original one; (2) the extent of urgency of maqasid al-shari’ah theory in legal reasoning process (ijtihad); and (3) the significant contribution of the contemporary Muslim scholars’ thoughts on the discourse of Islamic law. Abdullah Saeed’s reflection of the thinking about maqasid al-shari'ah is framed in three basic points: progressive-ijtihadi, contextuality in an effort to align Islam with contemporary development, and the ethico-legal to obtain the universal and moral values. In this case, Yasser Auda adds to interpret maqasid alshari' ah with asrar al-shari’ah in the frame of morality, universality, social justice, human dignity, human rights by questioning some fundamental things such as "whatness", "howness", and "whyness". Auda also tends to utilize the anthropological approach (maqasid al-shari'ah-based anthropology) and systems theory (maqas}id al-shari'ah-based systems theory) in determining the meaning of maqasid al-shari'ah as the approach in the study of Islamic law by establishing a set of categories, cognitive, wholeness, openness, hierarchy, multi-dimensionality, and the purposefulness. This kind of the research is going to be viewed through the contextual and phenomenological approach.