Yusuf al-Qaradawi’s Jurisprudence of Priorities A Critical Assessment
Main Article Content
Keywords
Yusuf al-Qaradawi, Islamic law, jurisprudence, ijtihād, fiqh, Shari'a
Abstract
According to Yusuf al-Qaradawi – a prominent Muslim jurist of the contemporary period, the jurisprudence of priorities is intended to mitigate excess and negligence in legal reasoning. This article examines the fundamental principles of the jurisprudence of priorities as propounded by Yusuf al-Qaradawi in relation to the foundational sources of Islamic law. The purpose of this article is to dissect the constituent legal principles of the jurisprudence of priorities and critically evaluate their validity and coherence against the textual and rational evidences of Islamic law. This article argues that the fundamental principles of the jurisprudence of priorities are validated in the sources of Islamic law, and do facilitate the mitigation of excess and negligence in legal reasoning.
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Al-Qaraḍāwī, Fiqh of Priorities, 3. The original translator had translated the Arabic word ‘marātib’ into English as ‘order’. However, the appropriate translation of marātib in this context would be ‘ranking’ in the sense of ‘hierarchy’. From the same root r-t-b the Arabic word tartīb is the conventional word for ‘order’ in the sense of ‘sequence’. An example is the title Asrār Tartīb al-Qur’ān (Secrets of the Order of the Qur’ān) by Jalāl al-Dīn al-Ṣuyūṭī (d. 977/1505) – a book elucidating the miraculous nature of the sequence within the texts of the Qur’ān.
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