ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on principles in Islamic legal thought called maslaha (Public Welfare) and maqa sid al-shar', the end goals of Islamic law, to establish the connectivity of Islamic law with 'modernity'. With the rise of Islamic activism in the late 1970s, the literature on modernity emphasized the contradiction between modernity and Islam, based on the Iranian experience. Contemporary literature emphasizes the necessity of the separation between faith and reason as a prerequisite to modernization. The principle of Public Welfare is very pertinent to the synthesis between modernity and Islam. Women in the Muslim world were utilized to emphasize the nature/ideology of the state and to carry on the discourse on modernity with the western world. The connection between Public Welfare and the End Goals of Shari'a and modernity is that they allow religious scholars to exercise human reasoning more freely, thus permitting the analysis and adjustment of old customs to the needs of modern life.
