Note: It has been several years that some fundamentalists have paid special attention to the rational way of life. Perhaps it can be said that the influx of new issues into the knowledge of jurisprudence and the limitation of texts has caused them to seek development in non-textual proofs such as rational way. In the meantime, some people are not satisfied with the contemporary intellectual tradition with Ma’sum and have considered newly created intellectual traditions as proof. Hujjat al-Islam wal-Muslimin Dr. Ali Sharifi, Prof. of Jami’at Al-Mustafa Qum, in this oral note, has addressed the challenges of reasoning to new ways to solve newly emerging jurisprudential issues. The note of the secretary of the Research Institute of Politics and Government of the Research Institute of Contemporary Jurisprudence is as follows:

In the new series, l must pay attention to the fundamental point that what do l need for new series? Why should jurisprudence be taken to new ways? I believe that there are two things that make us feel the need to discuss the established ways, one is verbal and the other is a fact of jurisprudence.

Theological root

Theological root is the feeling of need for its innovated ways, which are claimed to be comprehensive jurisprudence and respond to all needs. It is argued that the completeness of religion is necessary for the comprehensiveness of religion, and the comprehensiveness of religion is also necessary for the comprehensiveness of the divine Shari’ah. Forever divine law must be able to respond to all human needs.

Jurisprudential reality

On the other hand, we are faced with the fact that the sources of deriving jurisprudence relate to 1400 years ago, and of course, in that environment, it was responsive to the needs of that era. But some issues have arisen in the new age, which cannot be found in any of the inference sources. One of the ways that they have tried to fill the existing void is to adhere to tradition. Although they fill a part of this void by insisting on generalizations and rules, but it is still not enough, because there are still some issues in which we have neither generalizations nor rules to answer them. Of course, there is room for words and words in the scope of applications to newly emerging issues, but we will not enter into this discussion, but the problem is that in some cases, we do not have any general applications, and therefore we have to go to the conduct.

The inability of Ahl al-Bayt (‘a) to express the truth

We are facing a problem in relation to the sirah – both old and new sirahs – in general, and that is, how much is the discovery of the sirah from the opinion of the infallible? The fact that people acted in a certain way during the time of Imam al-Sadiq (‘a) and Imam Sadiq (‘a) was silent, to what extent it reveals the satisfaction of the infallible Imam, speaks for itself. Because there were many issues at that time that the imams (‘a) were silent about and the reason was the inability to express the truth. Even in some cases, an infallible imam like Amir al-Mu’minin (‘a) could not correct the wrong tradition and practice, let alone the imams who did not have the ability to express it. Amir al-Mu’minin could not change the Tarawih prayer, and even in Nahj al-Balagha there is this sentence that he said: “.If my feet were straight from these refutations, I would change things.”

This means that the Imam considered himself in a position where he had no ability to change the situation, so he said: If I put my foot where I can stand to get out of this slide, I will change many things, but now I cannot change the situation. If this is the situation of Amir al-Mu’minin (‘a), how can we expect that Imam Sadiq (‘a) will be able to act or at least verbally reject any Sunnah?

The challenge of connecting Sirah to the age of the infallible.

If we ignore this problem, the problem of connecting it to the Age of the Immaculate is also raised. To say that these matters were not their own; But there has been an emphasis on them. It is a statement that comes back to the judgment of reason, which means that from the point of view of reason, these things are necessary, and therefore, if Imam al-Sadiq were also, he would not reject it.

This article is similar to eating from the back; Because if the root of the matter is the ruling of reason, why do we attribute it to the infallible Imam? Why don’t we directly say that our mind understands like this? Of course, in this case, we cannot attribute our intellectual perception to the Shari’ah; Thus, we put the Sirah next to this ruling of the intellect in order to claim that our intellectual understanding is also approved by the Shari’ah and as a result, our intellectual ruling is the ruling of the Shari’ah. Why do we come to this conclusion? Because we want to match jurisprudential reality with theological basis. On the one hand, we claim the comprehensiveness of Shari’ah law, and on the other hand, we do not have enough resources. As a result, we are forced to give our intellectual understanding the color of Shari’ah and in this way increase the scope of Shari’ah rulings and fill the gaps, while there is no need for this.

We don’t need innovative sirah

Of course, it is necessary to add that we, as people who are religious and concerned about the point of view and position of the Shari’ah towards our actions, need to acquire the perspective of the Shari’ah; It means that every action we take, we should ask ourselves whether it is according to Shari’ah or not. But for this, it is not necessary to infer a positive ruling of the Shariah for every event, rather, it is sufficient to not reject the Shari’ah; That is, it is enough that there is no reason among the available jurisprudential sources that the Shari’ah is dissatisfied with our actions, and there is no need to obtain the Shariah’s signature and approval for all matters.

As a result, the discussion of the created ways seems to be an unnecessary and pointless discussion, and it is not fruitful.

The ruling is rational, not the ruling of reason

The question may be raised that due to the connection between the rule of reason and the rule of the Shari’ah, our intellectual rules become the rule of the Shari’ah as well. The answer is that, first of all, there is no connection between the rule of reason and Shari’ah. Secondly, in most cases, what is called the ruling is rational not the ruling of reason. It is not a rational ruling that always comes from its reason. Rationally, based on their understanding of good and evil, benefits and harms, they issue rulings that are completely different from one region to another and from one culture to another. For instance, Westerners today consider homosexuality to be justified, just as they consider many objectionable matters to be justified and agree with reason, but Shari’ah is against it. Yes, if the ruling is one of the rulings on which all intellectuals of the world agree and there is no objection from the Shari’ah, it is applicable only to the extent of excuse, but not in the complete sense, that is, we still cannot attribute it to God, although to the extent license can be beneficial for us. The fact that we have in the hadiths that “al-sunnah itha qisat mahaqa al-Din” or “innah dinullah la usabu bi uqul al-rijal” seems to refer to this issue.

Customization of jurisprudence

On what was said, it is sometimes criticized as the result of reducing the scope of the Shari’ah, the more and more common areas of human life and the marginalization of jurisprudence. It seems that this is not true. Because in some cases where we have a text and there are jurisprudential sources, there is no need to refer to those areas to reason, because there are undoubtedly some areas where our intellect does not reach, but in cases where there are not enough sources, what is wrong with that? Instead of giving a religious color to the things that arise from our fallible reason, we should consider the matter to be customary in nature. Adhering to established traditions is actually the same as giving religion to issues that are customary in nature and there is no need to legalize them.

This article is part of the file “New Evidence in Contemporary Jurisprudence” and will be prepared and published in collaboration with Ijtihad Network.