ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with a brief history of insurance, showing that it has surfaced throughout history and geography in many guises, even if few of them, it must be noted, are not as much profit-oriented as they are measures towards damage limitation. Then, the chapter starts to concentrate on the implications and applications of insurance where the Shari’a is concerned, before discussing the views of pre-modern jurists who had to form opinions of a type of Mu’amalat (dealing) which were known at their time as Sawkara (insurance). As we will see, the first scholar to give an opinion was Ibn Abdin, then Sheikh Mohammed Abdu, who was followed by a number of honourable scholars such as Mustafa Al Zarqa, known to approve of all kinds of insurance. Modern jurists’ opinions were drawn from those of the pre-modern jurists in the light of modern Mu’amalat, and their arguments are about its permissibility within Shari’a law.
