Abstract
All Muslims regard the Qur’an as authoritative. The Sunnah, on the otherhand, although authoritative to the majority of Muslims, does not enjoy suchuniversality.1Yet to the Sunnis and Shi‘ahs, both of them are so authoritativethat they are unquestionable sources of Islamic legal system. Thus, they aresources “from” which Islamic law is directly derived. So what makes “consensus”(ijmā‘: whether of the Muslim community or of the scholars) such acompelling candidate for an additional source of the legal system as far asSunnis are concerned? I contend that (1) the early jurists viewed this as thesafest way to inoculate and safeguard that system (and the other sources) fromindividual abuse and personal manipulation and that (2) without consensusand why it was originally construed and framed (notwithstanding how it wasapplied) by the jurists, the Qur’an and the Sunnah (despite their inherent religiousand theological authority) would be meaningless or inadmissible aslegitimate sources of law. But before I discuss consensus, I would like to addressthe two authoritative sources of law.All Muslims accept the Qur’an as God’s own words and therefore as themain source of the legal system (fiqh). Before the jurists began to deliberateand codify fiqh, the Shari‘ah was already embedded in the Qur’an and Muslimswere living their socio-religious and politico-economic lives in accordancewith its teachings. Therefore, when the jurists were ready to put thelaws into written form, they located all its original rules and expounded uponthem. However, universal recognition differs from universal agreement on themeaning of specific injunctions. In addition, it certainly differs from the claimthat the Qur’an covers every foreseeable legal injunction, for it does not.For a variety of reasons, the the Sunnah, does not enjoy any universal authority,among them (1) Some Muslims have questioned how the Prophet’steachings have been preserved and passed on, (2) classical and modern scholarshave raised serious doubts about the authenticity of certain hadiths, and ...
Published Version
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