الإباحة والضرورة: دراسة أصولية تطبيقية في القضايا الطبية المعاصرة

Permissibility and Necessity: An Usūlī Applied Study of Contemporary Medical Issues

Abstract

This study aims to analyze the uṣūlī relationship between the concepts of permissibility (ibāḥah) and necessity (ḍarūrah) in Islamic jurisprudence, and to clarify the methodological distinctions between a prescriptive ruling (ḥukm taklīfī) and an exceptional descriptive state (waṣf istithnāʾī), with the application of this analysis to selected models from contemporary medical issues. The research problem lies in the lack of a well-defined uṣūlī distinction between permissibility, as a prescriptive ruling based on legal choice, and necessity, as an incidental state that warrants legal concession by permitting deviation from the original ruling when a threat arises to one of the five essential interests (al-ḍarūriyyāt al-khams). This conceptual conflation has resulted in divergent juristic outcomes in the legal assessment of contemporary issues. The study seeks to address this problem by undertaking a principled uṣūlī refinement of both concepts, clarifying their points of convergence and divergence in terms of definition, nature, and legal effects, and subsequently testing these distinctions through selected applications in the medical field. The research adopts an inductive method by tracing the usages of these two concepts in the writings of jurists and legal theorists, an analytical method to refine the terminology and construct a coherent methodological framework for distinguishing between them, and a comparative method to highlight areas of agreement and divergence and their juristic implications. The study arrives at several findings, most notably that the most precise definition of permissibility is al-Āmidī’s definition grounded in legal choice, and that the most sound definition of necessity is that which encompasses the five essential interests. It also establishes that permissibility and necessity share certain common aspects while differing in terms of their nature and legal effects, a distinction that becomes clearly evident in contemporary medical applications such as treatment with prohibited substances and post-mortem dissection.