Is The Sharia Law Timeless?
1. So the natural law, the basis of science, is not divine? Is it God who creates modern tools and systems e.g. robots or it’s the mankind? 2. So are you saying if we have machines we should still get the horse ready or no need for horses any more? In my view, there is no need even though horses are specifically mentioned in the divine directive. 3. My understanding of sadd e zaria is anything that prevents the 5 sins in Sura Al Iraaf are sadd e zaria. Even the divine laws are to prevent those sins and therefore except for ibadaat, every things in sharia is sadd e zaria and therefore following them may be obligatory for the direct audience of Quran but for the others, it’s obligatory only if they are the best ideas to prevent the sins. 4. So we agree that the mutual agreement will prevail over the inheritance law. That was exactly my point. 5. I agree with you here. 6. I agree here too as you said Islamic punishments define the maximum limits meaning under no circumstances one can get punished more than that. there is no minimum punishments and a criminal can even be forgiven. so no disagreement.
1) I do not understand your use of term ‘Divine’ in this context. If by divine you mean that Natural Laws, laws of physics etc. were created as a result of Divine intervention, then yes I agree with you. However, this divine intervention is different from Divine Revelation in the form of Book i.e. Quran, which is more direct and more potent in terms of addressing humans as to what is required of them, what is their purpose in this life, and how to achieve ultimate salvation. The laws of nature, physics and mathematics were left to humans to discover and explore through a procees of evolution, but the laws which were directly related to our success in the life in the hereafter, were not left to human intellect solely, instead guidance was available since day one and no room was given to humans in this domain to discover them on their own through a process of societal evolution. 2) No, horses will not be used, as the directive was clearly pointing towards military might and there’s nothing which point towards its permanent nature as opposed to examples I quoted in Point (3) to my previous reply. 3) “ every thing in sharia is sadd e zaria ” – this point needs to be substantiated from the Divine Book itself, we cannot conclude this on a purely philosophical basis, especially when we have the source available with us in its pure form. Examples I quoted above in Point (3) to my previous reply, do indicate toward their permanent nature. And there are examples which also point toward some directives to be of Sadd-e-Zaria nature e.g. iddat directives, having witnesses etc. But all of this process has to go through the source book itself, not on surmise. Regarding other points ( 4,5 and 6 ), It’s true that we may be in agreement, but our approach is different in this regard e.g. in case of punishment of cutting hand of a thief, it is the principles of liguistics, when applied to the text of Quran, has led Ghamidi Sahab reach this conclusion that these are extreme punishments and are subject to other conditions as well, as pointed out in my previous response. Same is the case with inheritance and cloak requirments in Surah Ahzab. We have to go through the text of Quran to reach this conclusion; no blanket statement can be given in this regard. Each directive has to be studied separately, in the light of principles of linguistucs, the content and context of the text, the intended audience etc.