Legal principles I - Sh. Abdullah bin Bayyah

Session 1
(RIS Retreat)
-notes by Br.Suleyman

There are 5 famous principles of Shariah. These principles are the root of the shariah of our deen.

During the Prophet’s time, the Shariah was not written down, there were oral transmissions. The Quran was written down, and some Hadith were.

During the first century of Islam, ibn shihab collected the Hadith

So from here you had different collections of Hadith. From the principles that were in the Hadith, people derived the shareeah. Even though the shareeah was complete at Rasulullah’s time, different situations occurred so there were different schools of though.

From these constant derivation from Quran and Hadith, there were common principles for these derivations. These were the 5 principles of sharee'ah.

1. Certainty is not removed by doubt

2. Difficulties demand relief

3. Harm must be removed

4. Custom has legal weight

5. Matters are considered, based on their intentions

These qawaid (principles) became written down and they were set principles for deriving shareah.

The first qa’idah (principle): Certainty is not removed by doubt

Doubts are not given consideration in light of certainty.

Allah says in the Quran that kaafirs only follow what they think, they are in doubt and have no foundations.

This means that Muslims should have certainty in their actions.

All of the aqeedah, fiqh, Ibadaah etc. follow this principle.
An example of this principle is if you did wudhu (this is the certainty) and if you don’t know if you kept it or not (this is the doubt). then you go with the certainty, which is that you did the wudhu and remove the doubt, which is whether or not you kept it.

The same applies in Salaah – i.e if you are praying and you are on the 2nd rakaah and you are not sure if it is the 3rd, you go with the certainty which is the 2nd.

for legal issues (dept, stealing etc.) the certainty must have proof. So everyone is innocent until proven guilty. There is a lesson in this, which is not to be suspicious of people unless valid proof is given.

Everything is assumed pure, unless there is a reason why it is impure

Everything is permissible unless proven impermissible.

Second principle: Hardship necessitates facilities

Allah is aware of the weakness of mankind and he says in the Quran many times that He wants to lighten your burden.

A person’s life fluctuates, meaning he is born into weakness (baby/child) then gets older and strong (youth) and then they are back to weak.

For this reason circumstances change for hardship. When you are old, you are not able to do things that you were able to do when you were in your youth.

When one is healthy they can do many things, but if they get sick, there is hardship and they can’t do some of things they could do when they were healthy.

Wealthy people can do things that poor people can’t (i.e give sadaqah etc.)

Allah says “with difficulty becomes easy”

Rasulullah tells people to make things easy

The aim of the shareah is to make things easy for people.

Shaytan makes things difficult

So a person’s obligation is only to the degree of a persons burden.

So if it is time for jihad – that is an obligation, but if you have a severe flu, you won’t be able to fight and so you don’t have to fulfill the obligation because that would be a burden greater than you could bare.

Another example is at the time of Rasulullah (saw) companions were being tortured – much hardship, and so rasulullah permitted them giving into the torturers demand, as long as they didn’t mean it in their heart.

Example with hajj, if you are not financially or physically capable it is not an obligation.