Note: Hujjat al-Islam wal-Muslimeen Mohammad Qotbi has, for many years and in every position he has held, maintained his educational concerns—whether when he was head of the Isfahan Propaganda Office and director-general of the Isfahan Province Culture and Islamic Guidance Department, or now as CEO of the Eshraq House of Creativity and Innovation and head of the specialized desk for the development and deepening of Quranic culture at the Propaganda Office. We discussed with him the challenges of the fiqh of upbringing. As always, with precision and insight, he enumerated the challenges of this fiqh chapter. The head of the Art, Economy, and Creative Industries Working Group of the Specialized Council of the Cultural Revolution Council believes that the law never has the function of upbringing, and that to institutionalize upbringing, the institution of law should be used as little as possible. The full text of the exclusive interview of Contemporary Jurisprudence with this professor and researcher in social sciences is as follows:

Contemporary Jurisprudence: What do you consider to be the most important challenges of the fiqh of upbringing?

Qotbi: The fiqh of upbringing faces a set of complex challenges, some rooted in human nature and others resulting from social and technological transformations. One of the primary challenges is the continuous changeability of the human being. Since a person’s personality changes across different life stages, an educational ruling cannot be uniform for all periods. The jurist must take into account the stage of growth, the individual’s condition, the quality of relationships, and long-term effects.

The second challenge is the speed of social and media transformations. Upbringing today is influenced by social networks, platforms, games, interactive media, and new communication structures. This makes educational subject-matter identification extremely difficult. The jurist in educational fiqh requires deep and interdisciplinary knowledge to accurately understand the educational environment.

The third challenge is the interconnectedness of upbringing with various structures. Upbringing is not solely the task of the family or school; rather, it involves a combination of political, economic, cultural, media institutions, and even general lifestyles. In such conditions, the jurist must think systemically and network-based, not merely individually.

The next challenge is delineating the boundary between upbringing and coercion. Since upbringing must be based on free will and inclination, the jurist must precisely determine where restriction is legitimate and where it turns into illegitimate coercion.

Another challenge is the potential conflict between some traditional fatwas and the definitive and credible findings of educational sciences. For instance, certain punitive methods that were reasonable in the past are today recognized as harmful based on empirical data. The educational jurist must reconcile these findings with the principles of Sharia.

And the final challenge is the need for a new methodology in deriving educational rulings. As long as the analysis of consequences, the value chain of upbringing, and a systemic perspective are not precisely formulated, educational derivation cannot achieve the necessary stability and coherence.

Contemporary Jurisprudence: Does the discipline of fiqh fundamentally bear the mission of “upbringing human beings,” or is this duty entrusted to other disciplines?

Qotbi: The fiqh of upbringing cannot alone respond to the issue of upbringing, because upbringing is a complex, multidimensional matter requiring precise scientific knowledge of growth, human psychology, communications, environment, media, and social structures. In truth, the fiqh of upbringing plays the role of “director and standard-setter”; that is, fiqh determines the boundaries, ends, and limits of values, but determining the mechanisms for realizing upbringing, methods, techniques, educational systems, and executive models falls to the science of education, psychology, sociology, and management.

For example, fiqh states that upbringing must be based on innate nature (fitra) and free will; but psychology explains how intrinsic motivation is formed. Fiqh states that parents are responsible for upbringing, but sociology explains how family structure affects personality formation. Fiqh states that media must be wholesome, but communication sciences explain what content produces what effects.

In one sentence, upbringing is an interdisciplinary project; the fiqh of upbringing brings the “values,” and the educational sciences bring the “methods.” Neither is complete without the other.

Contemporary Jurisprudence: Are fatwas such as the permissibility of parents and teachers striking children reconcilable with rational educational approaches?

Qotbi: To reconcile these two domains, first it must be clarified that traditional fatwas, including the permissibility of striking a child under specific conditions, were issued in the temporal, cultural, and contextual framework of the past and pertained to circumstances where educational tools were limited, family structures differed, and scientific knowledge of the psychological consequences of behaviors was very rudimentary. In that context, limited and non-abusive striking was regarded as a last-resort means of behavioral control, not a desirable or permanent method. The classical jurist issued rulings in conditions where no effective, non-harmful alternative was available.

On the other hand, the definitive findings of today’s educational sciences show that corporal punishment—even in mild form—has negative effects on self-confidence, emotional bonds, moral growth, and the child’s sense of security. Therefore, proper reconciliation is neither the absolute negation of traditional fatwas nor their unquestioning acceptance, but rather their evaluation within the comprehensive system of upbringing. Striking must be viewed within the constellation of overarching Islamic values: preserving dignity, prohibiting harm, the rule of la darar, the rule of la haraj, the obligation to observe the interest of the one being educated, the importance of fostering affection and emotional security, and the role of intrinsic motivations.

The fiqh of upbringing states that if striking had no alternative in the past, today, in light of scientific knowledge and available tools, it should only be raised in very exceptional cases and under fully controlled conditions—and only if no other effective method works, the striking does not amount to harm, and it does not produce long-term negative effects on the relationship and personality. Thus, the traditional ruling of permissibility of striking becomes a “conditional, rare, purposeful, and severely restricted permission,” and in practice, its educational position approaches zero.

In this way, reconciliation between the two perspectives is possible not by eliminating past rulings but by re-understanding them within the framework of the maqasid al-sharia, fiqh rules, and the definitive findings of educational sciences.

Contemporary Jurisprudence: Some believe that “maximally converting fiqh propositions into law reduces individuals’ religious experience and, consequently, deprives them of the opportunity for their own upbringing.” Do you agree with this claim?

Qotbi: Legislation is only one tool of upbringing, and it is a tool with limited function. Many important educational values—such as responsibility, honesty, discipline, anger control, respect, kindness, or faith—cannot be achieved through legal obligation. These values must be internalized, and internalization occurs through lived experience, habituation, social structures, and human relationships.

If values are excessively entrusted to the law, individuals will behave not out of moral choice but merely out of fear of punishment or to avoid legal consequences. This weakens moral development and diminishes the depth of faith. The law should guarantee the minimums of social order and prevent major harms, not take the place of individual and social upbringing.

Therefore, the fiqh of upbringing states: the law has a supportive role in upbringing, not a constructive one. Authentic upbringing takes shape when values are institutionalized in social living structures: in lifestyle, family relationships, school form, media environment, daily habits, and collective rituals. The law can prepare the space for this flow but cannot substitute for it.

Contemporary Jurisprudence: In the educational challenge of fiqh propositions, one of the two disciplines—“fiqh” or “upbringing”—must be considered fixed, and the other must change accordingly. In your view, between these two disciplines, which is fixed and which is variable?

Qotbi: Upbringing, as a human reality, has fixed and universal principles. The ends of upbringing—such as growth, perfection, piety, self-awareness, and human dignity—do not change over time. However, the tools, environmental conditions, methods, and subjects of upbringing are constantly changing. Fiqh’s duty is to analyze these variable subjects in relation to the fixed principles of upbringing.

In other words, “upbringing” is a fixed matter, but the “requirements of upbringing” are always undergoing transformation. The fiqh of upbringing, relying on fixed principles, must provide responses and rulings appropriate to current conditions. For example, the principle of upbringing based on free will is fixed, but the tools that strengthen free will differ in each era. Or the principle of upbringing based on affection and emotional security is fixed, but the conditions threatening security take new forms in each period.

The fiqh of upbringing must, while preserving the fixed pillars, make its rulings flexible and proportionate to changes at the executive level. This flexibility is what enables fiqh to always remain in step with upbringing as a fixed matter.

Contemporary Jurisprudence: To make fiqh propositions educational, what change must occur in the foundations, the process of derivation, or…?

Qotbi: Upbringing is not a momentary event; rather, it is a long-term and continuous process in which seemingly small behaviors, over time, produce major effects. Therefore, a fiqh ruling in upbringing cannot be limited to a single moment, behavior, or situation. It must be evaluated in the value chain of upbringing: that is, its short-term, medium-term, and long-term impact on personality growth and value formation must be analyzed.

For example, a behavior may yield positive results in the short term but have negative effects in the long term on self-esteem, independence, motivation, or emotional bonds. Traditional fiqh usually focuses on the “immediate effect” or “conformity with duty”; but the fiqh of upbringing must have a process-oriented perspective. Upbringing means accompanying the human being on the path of growth, not merely correcting outward behavior.

The value chain of upbringing states that behavior, motivation, relationship, context, consequence, and social structure all gain meaning together. Consequently, an educational ruling must attend to all these elements. This process-oriented view makes the educational ruling both more precise and more realistic and prevents behavioral contradictions.

Contemporary Jurisprudence: Given the importance of upbringing throughout history, why has it not yet been raised as an independent chapter in hadith or fiqh, or as a subject of independent research in fiqh and hadith?

Qotbi: This is not only possible but necessary. Although the ultimate goal of all fiqh chapters is the upbringing of human beings, this goal has never been framed as an independent chapter tasked with explicating the Islamic educational system from the perspective of fiqh. The fiqh of upbringing can serve as the link that connects the overarching objectives of Sharia to detailed rulings and makes human growth the criterion for analyzing rulings.

This independent chapter has two relations to other chapters: first, the “subject-specific ruling” of many chapters relates to upbringing and must be re-read within the educational constellation—such as family rulings, hudud, transactions, or cultural policy. Second, the fiqh of upbringing itself analyzes specific educational subjects—such as the teacher-student relationship, parental responsibility, moral care, sexual upbringing, media upbringing, social upbringing—from a fiqh perspective.

In this way, the fiqh of upbringing is a “specialized chapter” that both fits within fiqh and provides a system for guiding and directing other chapters. This chapter can elevate fiqh from a point-based state to a networked and process-oriented one and ensure its coherence with the overarching objective of Sharia.