Legal Principles II - Sh. Abdullah bin Bayyah

Session 4 (RIS Retreat)
-notes by Br.Suleyman

3rd principle: Custom has legal weight

Sometimes customs are apart of Islam.

Customs are defined as the culture of a society.

Islam encourages following the customs of your society, in the Quran it says “practice your customs with what is good”

There are 3 categories of customs in the shareeah:

1. Islam rejects
- in jahiliyyah, the custom of boasting, idolatry and burying baby daughters alive were customs of the Arabs before the prophet SAW, but Islam rejects them.

2. Accepts it

3. Calibrated the customs

- some were good, some were bad, so Islam purified the bad.

There are 2 types of customs.

1. How people speak:

- different expressions, different ways of indicating different things.

ex. in western custom, when someone says “we’re through” it means that the couple has broken up.

2. How people act:
- how people do things – i.e body language, signs – middle finger = crude.

Many things in Islam depend on the custom of the society that you are in.

Ex. the custom for today is that when you go to the convenient store to buy something, there is little to no words when buying, you just put the gum or whatever on the counter and put the money without talking with the cashier.

Imam Shafi said that this transaction is invalid, and you have to talk to the person in order for the transaction to be valid.

The other Imams said it was okay because it is the custom of the people.