A Critical Analysis of the Arguments of Opponents regarding the Validity of the Savor of Divine Law (Mazāq-i Sharīʿat), Based on an Analysis of the Forms of its Invocation

فقه و اصول (Fiqh va uṣūl)

Article 2, Volume 57, Issue 1 - Serial Number 140, May 2025, Pages 39-59   

Document Type: Original Article

DOI: 10.22067/jfiqh.2023.81317.1548

Authors

Saeed Ahmadi Fard^{* 1}; Mohammad Bagheri Shahroudi²

¹Assistant Professor, Department of Fiqh and Foundations of Law, Faculty of Theology and Islamic Studies, University of Mazandaran, Babolsar, Iran

²Instructor of Advanced Studies in Fiqh and Principles of Jurisprudence, Seminary of Qom, Qom, Iran

Abstract

There is disagreement among the jurists regarding the authoritativeness of the Savor of Divine Law as a source for deriving legal rulings. The present study aims at examining the arguments of the opponents of this idea, based on various modes in which appealing to the Savor of Divine Law is made. The study was conducted through the descriptive-analytical method and using a library-based approach. It is concluded that some of the jurists’ arguments for opposing the Savor of Divine Law include the “presence of problematic implications” (tālī fāsid), and “the lack of mention of the Savor of Divine Law as an independent source of jurisprudential reasoning”. The problematic implications include the “ambiguous nature (Muḥtamal al-wajhayn) of its conceptual origin”, “the conflation of hypothesis with theory”, and “the creation of a vague definition for the Savor of Divine Law. Exploring the arguments of this group of jurists based on the forms of invoking the Savor of Divine Law illustrates that some of the criticisms and problematic implications are valid, while others are not. Simultaneously, other arguments have been presented for the rejection of the Savor of Divine Law that strengthen the hypothesis of its invalidity.

Keywords

of the Savor of Divine Law; Invalidity of the Savor of Divine Law; forms of invoking the Savor of Divine Law

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