Contemporary Legal Rullings In Islam

The Qur'an and the corpus of hadith literature constitute a comprehensive legal resource that is invoked to regulate the various aspects of a Muslim believer's life. New situations and contingencies have prompted the experts in the field to delve into the sources and to devise methodological devices in usul al-fiqh to enable them to deduce fresh juridical rulings (fatawa) in order to deal with novel problems and issues. Consequently, the door of independent research (ijtihad) -- deducing legal rulings in the area of human-divine ('ibadat) and human-human (mu'amalat) relationships -- has remained open in the Ja'fari/Shi'ah Ithna 'Ashari/Imami school of thought. This is not a peculiar feature of the Ja'fari school, and it is presently being argued in Islamic scholarship that, contrary to the commonly held opinion, the gate of ijtihad was not considered closed by Sunni jurists of the 4th/10th century.
This work contains the translation of a selection of new legal rulings that are based on the opinion of the eminent jurist Ayatullah al-'Uzma al-Sayyid 'Ali al-Husayni al- Seestani, who resides in Najaf, Iraq, and is the point of reference, or marja', for a good part of the Shi'ah Ithna 'Ashari community of believers, who revert to him for guidance. Three of his works, Al-Fatawa al-Muyassarah (FM), al-Mustahdathat min al-Masa'il al-Shar'iyyah (MMS) and Minhaj al-Salihin, vol. 1 (MS) were used in compiling the list of questions/answers and organizing them under appropriate subjects. The source is clearly marked in regular brackets after the response to each question to facilitate easy reference to the original Arabic text.
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