The series "The Caliphate and the Imamate in Islamic Thought"
By the writer and thinker Thaer Salama - Abu Malik
The Twenty-Second Episode: Legislation is the Right of God Almighty Alone
The concept of legislation, who has the right to legislate, i.e. who is the ruler, is one of the first and most important topics in the principles of jurisprudence, i.e. one of the most important researches related to governance, the first of them, the most obligatory to explain, is knowing who the issuance of the ruling goes back to, i.e. who is the ruler; Because knowing him depends on knowing the ruling and its type. The ruler here does not mean the owner of the authority who implements everything with his authority, but rather the ruler means the one who owns the issuance of the ruling on actions and on things; Because what exists of tangible things does not go beyond being human actions, or things that are not human actions; Because man, as he lives in this universe, is the subject of research, and the issuance of the ruling is only for him, and related to him, it is necessary to judge human actions, and things related to them. So who is the one who alone has the right to issue a ruling on that? Is it God, or man himself? In other words, is it the Sharia, or the mind? Because the one who tells us that this is God’s ruling is the Sharia, and the one who makes man judge is the mind. So who judges, is it the Sharia, or the mind? Or it may be the mind, and the Sharia is evidence of it, or the Sharia, and the mind is evidence of it. [2].
This is different from researching eating pork, stealing apples, making wine, and sitting with those who drink it. These last are all actions related to things, so they have their rulings. This is a discussion of the ruling on actions. Onions are permissible, and eating them before going to the mosque is reprehensible, and apples are permissible, and stealing them is forbidden, and buying stolen apples is forbidden!
There is also a discussion of the generality of actions, such as the absoluteness of hearing, the absoluteness of seeing, the absoluteness of walking, the absoluteness of sitting, and the discussion of innate actions, i.e. actions that man is predisposed to, such as a man winking while talking, or that the nature of his walking is that he walks quickly, and these all fall under the discussion of the generality of evidence, and its ruling in Sharia is permissibility[4], and the purpose of the ruling is to control human behavior to achieve God’s satisfaction by adhering to His commands, according to a concept derived legally from the action or thing!
But before we get to the discussion of the ruling on actions, the ruling on things, the ruling on the generality of actions, and the ruling on innate actions, we must discuss who has the right to issue the ruling on actions and things initially!
[2] As for things, which are related to actions, the basic principle regarding them is permissibility unless there is evidence of prohibition. The basic principle regarding things is that they are permissible, and they are not prohibited unless there is legal evidence of their prohibition; This is because the legal texts have permitted all things, and these texts came general and include everything. God Almighty said: ﴿Do you not see that God has subjected to you what is in the earth?﴾ Al-Hajj 65. The meaning of God’s subjugation of everything on earth for man is His permission for everything on earth. God Almighty said: ﴿O people, eat from what is on earth [that is] lawful and good﴾ Al-Baqarah 168, and He said: ﴿O children of Adam, take your adornment at every mosque, and eat and drink﴾ Al-A'raf 31, and He said: ﴿It is He who has made the earth subservient to you, so walk upon its slopes﴾ Al-Mulk 15. Thus, all the verses that came in permitting things came general, so their generality indicates the permissibility of all things, so the permissibility of all things came with the general address of the Sharia. So the evidence for its permissibility is the legal texts that came with the permission of everything. If something is forbidden, there must be a specific text for this general rule, indicating the exclusion of this thing from the generality of permission; Hence, the basic principle regarding things is permissibility. That is why we find that the Sharia, when it forbade things, has stipulated these things themselves, as an exception to the generality of the text, so God Almighty said: ﴿Forbidden to you are dead animals, blood, the flesh of swine﴾ Al-Ma'idah 3, ﴿And why should you not eat of that upon which the name of Allah has been mentioned while He has explained in detail to you what He has forbidden you, excepting that to which you are compelled﴾ 119 Al-An'am (The Islamic Personality, Part Three, Chapter: No Ruling Before the Arrival of the Sharia.)
[4] The Clear in the Principles of Jurisprudence, Muhammad Hussein Abdullah p. 219
