ABSTRACT
A critical evaluation of the purpose and objective of Islamic Law, namely maqasid as-shari’ah as it has evolved in Islamic scholastic experience is undertaken. The deeper philosophy and potential of maqasid as-shari’ah within the great design of the monotheistic law, Sunnat Allah, is explained. Such explanation is carried out in the light of the core of Islamic epistemology that directly induces Islamic Law. This critical evaluation is pursued in the light of the epistemological worldview and its methodical formalism of unity of knowledge contra a differentiated and conflicting view of human experience in rationalism. The episteme of unity of knowledge is Tawhid as the law of everything in the precept of unity as understood by the monotheistic law, Sunnat Allah. In the light of the extendibility of maqasid as-shari’ah across the relationally unifying domain of Sunnat Allah we discuss the potentiality of shari’ah in terms of res extensa (epistemic extension) and res cogitans (cognitive capacity).
Various occidental thoughts in this quest for extendibility of the epistemic totality are critically examined by the Tawhidi monotheistic law. The universality of the Tawhidi law of monotheism in respect of its characteristics of res extensa and res cogitans is studied to bring out the potentiality of maqasid as-shari’ah. Thereby, the new vision of inter-systemic extensions across diverse domains of intellection interactively unified together is formalized. This formalism goes beyond the existing limits of maqasid as-shari’ah, confined as it is to muamalat.
The critical discussion launched in reference to the wider meaning, objective, and purpose of maqasid as-shari’ah under the epistemology of the Tawhidi methodological worldview results in the substantive understanding of maslaha, wellbeing. This forms the ultimate index of socio-scientific valuation under maqasid as-shari’ah in the light of the Tawhidi epistemological worldview. Thereby, the perspective of socio-economic development; and more extensively socio-scientific intellection, is brought out as extensively participatory evolutionary process under the principle of unity of knowledge (Tawhidi episteme). Brief examples are invoked to establish this fact. An example of measured multidimensional wellbeing (maslaha) as the final index of participatory organic relations that maqasid as-shari’ah ought to project in reference to Tawhidi methodological worldview is represented.
