The Objectives

I intended, in this book, to discuss great topics of the purposes of Islamic Sharia, to represent them, and to prove them, so that these purposes would be a beacon to those who are conversant with the religion, and a reference among them when opinions differ and times change.

I also aim at reducing the difference between the jurists of the regions, and make it a training for their followers on fairness in giving preference to some sayings over others when the sparks of disagreement erupt, so that what we wanted many times would be achieved, which is rejecting fanaticism and inclining to the truth, if the intention is to help Muslims by legislating their urgent interests when accidents and calamities took place, and by giving good opinions if arguments and debates among doctrines dangerously took place.

I was keen on achieving this book due to the difficulty of debate between those who differed in matters of Sharia, as they did not give necessary or close evidence to which the arrogant would submit and by which the suspecious would be guided.

Just as the people of rational sciences support their logical and philosophical arguments with necessary evidence, observations, and established principles, so that the arguments would end among all, so jurists need to.

One may think that the issues of the science of fundamentals of jurisprudence are treasures, but once he is able to learn the fundamentals of jurisprudence, he will certainly realize that most issues of the fundamentals are differed over, and the argument is continuous in the branches due to the difference among the fundamentals, and you can say that the argument has continued between them over branches because they took the fundamental rules from the the characteristics of those branches, as the science of fundamentals was not codified until nearly two centuries after of the codification of jurisprudence.

However some conversants were weak at fundamentals, and few were those conversants in Jurisprudence who would debate, so the science of fundamentals was not definitive which would be of help for those differing in jurisprudence, and it was difficult or impossible for them to agree on one opinion, or even be of similar opinions.

Most issues of the fundamentals of jurisprudence are not related to serving the aim and pupose of sharia, but rather revolve around the axis of deriving rulings from the words of the lawgiver by means of rules that enable the knower to extract branches from them, or extract descriptions meant by those words, and can make those descriptions an incentive for legislation.

So, many branches are compared to one of these words, with the belief that all of these branches contain the description that they believed was intended in the word of the lawgiver, which is the description called “the reason”.