Ayatullah Abulqasim Alidust on January 24 at a scientific meeting titled “Methodology of Islamic Sciences; What it is, its dimensions, works and challenges” which was held by the contemporary jurisprudence research institute in Qum, lran stating that philosophy is not part of Islamic sciences, while the parent and offspring of the principles of jurisprudence are Islamic, he said: Basically, the principles for jurisprudence that are Islamic science is correct, but prosody, syntax, eloquence, etc. existed before Islam. Therefore, when we talk about the methodology of Islamic sciences, it means the methodology of sciences that were present in Islamic civilization.
The member of the Board of Trustees of the Research Institute of Contemporary Jurisprudence added: If this statement is true, in Islamic civilization, there is also mathematics, medicine, physics, and chemistry, and in this case, are the experimental sciences, mathematics, and humanities included in this discussion? If we go further to the humanities, for instance, some people consider economics to be one of these sciences, so the task of these things should be clarified; In my idea, if we consider Islamic humanities as the sciences present in Islamic civilization, in this case, Islamic humanities will be considered in the special sense, and of course our emphasis is on jurisprudence.
The teacher of the al-Dars al-kharij course stated that sometimes we talk about jurisprudence as a knowledge and sometimes it is referred to the operation of inference, and this issue is sometimes confused and some people intend to talk about the knowledge of jurisprudence, but they mix it with the operation of inference. He added: Another issue is the nature and dimensions of the methodology of Islamic sciences. Sometimes we take an ontological and philosophical look at the methodology of Islamic sciences, which means that philosophy is added and does not intend to look at the problem in a norm-breaking and ideological way.
Ayatullah Alidust continued: If someone wants to analyze the methodology of jurisprudence, the methodology will be ijtihad or jurisprudence, but if he intends to analyze what it is, it will become a philosophical discussion, and in fact, the analysis of what was and is in the past will be analyzed, although it is possible do not judge.
Martyr Mutahhari’s attention to methodology
The professor of the seminary stated that in some of his writings, Senior Mutahhari explains about the Islamic sciences of theology, Islamic mysticism, and various types of philosophy, etc., and said: He has not dealt here normatively and ideologically, but he also has a methodology and what is the meaning of the methodology. And the dimensions and types of philosophy and… have been discussed, but sometimes people look at some sciences with a normative and value view, so they fall into judgment and make judgments, hence it is no longer a question of methodology.
He added: I have two books on methodology, in the first of which I have discussed the observation and comparison of ijtihad schools of thought; In this book, I have discussed with a normative point of view so that the existing damages and strengths are taken into consideration, but in the other book, the ontological point of view was dominant.
Senior Alidust mentioned a memory about the methodological works and added: In 1950s, when I was teaching the book al-Makasib to some professors, I saw that in a part of al-Makasib, the shaykh presented the arguments of the parties and rejected one opinion and finally gave his own opinion. He gives and again uses the term “Al-lnsaf” (fair) and of course the position of the Shaykh does not allow one to attack Shaykh al-Ansari, for example, he has given several reasons regarding the al-mujassameh. If we asked the professors about the reason for this, they would not have an answer, but when some time passed and I got to know more about this category, I realized that this problem is caused by his methodology, and if we know it, we will not blame him again. .
Ayatullah Alidust stated that there is no issue that the shaykh considered to be consensus, and stated: For this reason, some scholars have said that he forgot what the shaykh mentioned in the book al-Usul about consensus, that is, he said something in the usul at night and forgot it next day, while this is not true and the Shaykh’s method is logical; His method is not a school and he doesn’t think mathematically, but he has collected suspicions and through that he reaches a consensus and when he reaches a consensus, he issues a fatwa, so he considers the consensus useless in principle, but if he wants to be together in a circular system, he does not go beyond the consensus.
The professor of the seminary stated that the shaykh entered the discussions methodically, and added: If someone wants to criticize Shaykh Ansari, Ayatullah Khu’i, etc., each of them has their own separate methodology; The one who says that fame is not proof and if it is placed next to weak khabar, it is useless, but the author of al-Jawahir considers the lowest degree of fame is the compensator of weak documents and considers it proof. This shows that one is gathering all suspicions, and the other is standing at the top of mathematical jurisprudence and has not seen the big and small issues.
The weakness of the method
He continued: Some of our notable elders are not intended due to the lack of methods, so sometimes they are completely against the purposes, but in the case of usury, they become completely intended, as if all the texts of Islam served the purposes of the Shari’ah, and we have this question: If intentions play a role, why is it considered in some cases? Therefore, two works are related to the methodology; One is that humans can judge other people’s works, and the other is that our own opinion comes to a consensus, and it is not like that, like Shaykh Mufid and others, while being rationalistic, we suddenly become news-oriented in a case; Even now, we have those who speak rationally but issue ikhbari fatwas.
Ayatullah Alidust stated that I have included other works for methodology in my book, and added: We usually place ikhbari as an interpreter of the Qur’an, but in jurisprudence it is the opposite, that is, a narration is the interpreter of a verse, and the same verse is the interpreter of the same narration, and I use it a lot. I have discussed this topic a lot; I have given the narration of Muhammad bin Muslim below “man yashtri…” as an interpreter of the Qur’an, and the same verse is also a commentary for this narration, so this is also a method and the methodology is called the science of interpretation.
Challenges facing the methodologist
Referring to the challenges facing the methodology, the teacher of al-Bahth al-kharij at the seminary added: The first challenge is redundancy; That is, they consider something like methodology to be decorative and unnecessary, and they say, did a certain authority or previous authorities know these things that became references? This is despite the fact that, in my opinion, the excessiveness of methodology hurts us a lot.
A member of the Board of Trustees of the Research Institute of Contemporary Fiqh added: Simplicity is also one of the other challenges, that is, he may not consider the methodology superfluous, but he considers it simple. Does anyone think the conversation about contemporary jurisprudence is redundant? Definitely not. The atmosphere of the field is moving towards contemporary jurisprudence, but there is the challenge of simplifying it, and this simplicity can have many risks for us.
Ayatullah Alidust clarified: Contemporary jurisprudence needs discourse, not just a lecture with a specific topic, and of course, two-sided presentation by a professor, and let’s call it contemporary jurisprudence. I have said many times that a professor of the seminary, when he is going to talk about the jurisprudence of the stock exchange and cryptocurrency, etc., there should be an expert on that subject by his side, not that he should take charge of it himself and do the thematics using the Internet; This method is not contemporary jurisprudence.