Book Introduction: The Alignment of Jurists with the Rational People (ʿUqalāʾ)

Author: Mehdi Montazir Qa’im
Publisher: Nashr-e Ney
Year: 1403 (2024–2025 CE)¹

Overview

The book “The Alignment of Jurists with the Rational People” is a collection of 15 articles that emphasize the importance of juridical and rational engagement in understanding and applying Islamic rulings. With a contemporary lens on Islamic jurisprudence and its interaction with reason and prevailing norms, the book examines both the challenges and opportunities facing contemporary religious scholars. The central argument is that Islamic fiqh must evolve with the changing contexts of time and place — particularly in social, political, and economic domains — while maintaining its core religious principles.

Mehdi Montazir Qa’im, the author, argues that jurists can reinterpret traditional rulings through reason and social awareness, thereby keeping the Sharī‘ah dynamic and responsive to contemporary realities. Published in 1403 by Nashr-e Ney, the book attempts to provide practical frameworks for updating Islamic legal verdicts in a way that is both principled and progressive.

1. Divine Law and the Practices of Rational People (ʿUqalāʾ): This article explores how Islamic law either aligns with or tolerates many rational social customs. Where there is apparent conflict, it is often treated as a secondary ruling (ḥukm thanawī). The piece shows that jurisprudence can realign itself with contemporary norms by reexamining its foundational principles.

2. Jurists and Social Norms in Governance and Judiciary: In practice, jurists in positions of authority often act more based on social norms than on strict juridical expertise. The article distinguishes between their religious and civil roles, suggesting that effective governance relies more on common societal reasoning than purely legalistic frameworks.

3. Following Deceased or Less Knowledgeable Jurists: Using the rational basis of taqlīd, this article defends the permissibility of following both deceased and less knowledgeable jurists, provided the follower gains actionable religious knowledge. It stresses that legitimacy in following a jurist is not strictly tied to their being alive or the most learned (aʿlam).

4. The People’s Right to Enjoin or Forbid Rulers: This article argues, using religious sources, that the public has the right to enjoin good and forbid wrong even upon political authorities. It rejects the idea that religious institutions can deny this right, instead affirming the role of public accountability.

5. Coercion in Practicing Islamic Law: This piece analyzes whether coercion in religious practice is legitimate. It concludes that compulsion in observing the Sharī‘ah is generally not valid, especially in personal and social matters, unless it falls within public penalties endorsed by the majority.

6. Jurists Among the Rational Public: This article examines how jurists relate to the rational norms of society. It argues that legal opinions aligned with reason and current realities are more likely to reflect the true intent of divine law. Hence, fiqh must remain flexible and in step with evolving social conditions.

Conclusion

The Alignment of Jurists with the Rational People offers a critical and innovative outlook on how Islamic law can remain faithful to tradition while addressing contemporary issues. Through descriptive and analytical methods, the author emphasizes the importance of reason, custom (ʿurf), and contextual understanding in issuing legal verdicts. This book is an essential read for students and scholars of Islamic jurisprudence, as well as for anyone interested in the evolving relationship between religion and society in the modern world. It serves as a resourceful guide for rethinking ijtihād in light of rational and social transformations.

---

Fiqh on the Scale of Rationality: Rethinking Rulings Through the Lens of Custom and Contemporary Conditions

Dr. Mehdi Montazir Qa’im²

✔ The book “The Alignment of Jurists with the Rational People” written by Dr. Mehdi Montazir Qa’im, associate professor at the University of Judicial Sciences, is an academic effort to map the relationship between traditional Shi‘i jurisprudence and modern social rationality.

✔ This work consists of fifteen analytical articles that, using jurisprudential, narrative, and historical experience-based sources, examine the necessities of revising the traditional structure of fiqh.

✔ The author, with an innovative approach, holds the view that although fiqh is based on texts and tradition, many fatwas and rulings were influenced by the historical, customary, and cultural circumstances of the era of revelation. Therefore, in the modern world, with fundamental transformations in values, relationships, and social structures, re-examining topics and evaluating their compatibility with religious rulings is inevitable.

✔ Montazir Qa’im distinguishes between two approaches to fiqh:

• The maximalist view, which believes that fiqh must respond to all aspects of life.

• The minimalist view, which sees fiqh as responsive within a limited and specialized domain, granting primary space to custom, contemporary knowledge, and human experience. He adopts the second view, emphasizing that the role of social custom and the rational members of society in determining topics and the application of rulings is central, and that jurists are inevitably reliant on customary methods and concepts in the process of jurisprudential derivation.

✔ In parts of the book, topics such as the critique of the diyāt (blood money) system, the reconsideration of rulings on the impurity of non-Muslims, the adaptation of fiqh to modern times, and the critique of the notion of compulsion in Sharī‘ah are addressed.

✔ In one article on diyāt, the author explains that the basis of camels, gold dinars, and Yemeni garments for compensation was tied to the custom of the Prophet’s time and no longer holds relevance today. He also believes that identifying the subject matter is the role of custom, not the jurist; and if the subject changes, the ruling must also change.

✔ Among the other important topics of the book is the right of the people to oversee religious governance. The author views this oversight as not only legitimate but a religious obligation, and believes that the degree to which a government accepts such oversight is a criterion for determining its religiosity. If the poor cannot bring claims against the ruler, or if absolute poverty exists in society, one cannot speak of a religious government.

✔ In his view, full and unilateral application of religious texts to all the changing conditions of the contemporary world is unrealistic and contrary to the spirit of the Sharī‘ah. According to him, one cannot impose the tribal culture of 7th-century Arabia on today’s society and expect harmony. For example, one cannot deprive women of many rights based on that culture or entangle society with rulings that are no longer functional.

✔ He also openly critiques compulsion in the implementation of Sharī‘ah. In his view, no religious ruling should be imposed on an individual through coercion, even if that ruling is a path to salvation. Closeness to God and true faith are realized through free will, not force. Therefore, mandates such as compulsory hijab or physical confrontation with wrongdoings contradict the spirit of the Sharī‘ah.

✔ Montazir Qa’im, in his critique of the prevailing theory of amr bi-l-ma‘rūf wa nahi ‘an al-munkar, relying on narrations, demonstrates that internal (heart-based) and verbal stages are sufficient, and that there is no religious justification for physical coercion. Instead of physical confrontation with wrongs, one should, through good behaviour, denounce the ugliness of evil and promote the beauty of virtue.

✔ In sum, the book “The Alignment of Jurists with the Rational People” is a bridge between religious texts and the needs of the time – a striving for the fusion of Sharī‘ah and contemporary rationality – and a clarification of the key point that if fiqh is to remain alive, it must be accompanied by rational custom, social ethics, and human dignity.

Reza Dastjerdi of the Islamic Thought Hub (Anidshe Ma) writes: “The Alignment of Jurists with the Rational People” by Mehdi Montazir Qa’im, published by Nashr-e Ney, is a collection of fifteen articles that, with a novel approach, re-examines Shi‘i jurisprudence in the face of contemporary challenges. The book seeks, through the fusion of transmitted and rational sources, to present a harmonized image of the Sharī‘ah that is both faithful to religious foundations and responsive to the needs of today’s society. The author aims to reconstruct traditional jurisprudence by relying on modern rationality and social custom. He believes that Shi‘i fiqh, formed in the early centuries of Islam based on the Qur’an and tradition, requires a re-evaluation of historical fatwas to align with social, political, and cultural changes.

He critiques certain old fatwas incompatible with current realities and emphasizes the need to consider the role of custom in legal derivation. Accordingly, each of the fifteen articles in the book is devoted to a specific topic, such as:

• the role of custom in determining the subjects of rulings,

• the legitimacy of public oversight over governance,

• the proportionality of rulings to their subjects,

• and the challenges of traditional punishments.

The articles are written with references to major jurists’ opinions and multiple sources. The author has also attempted to show, using historical examples, how temporal and spatial conditions influence the understanding of rulings. Furthermore, Montazir Qa’im justifies the need to revise certain punishments or methods of enjoining good and forbidding wrong by appealing to the practice of rational people (sīrah al-‘uqalā’). Based on this, “The Alignment of Jurists with the Rational People”, as a bridge between traditional fiqh and modern rationality, is valuable for researchers in Islamic law, religious thinkers, and social activists.

What follows is the result of a conversation with Mehdi Montazir Qa’im, Associate Professor at the University of Judicial Sciences.

Fiqh and the Flux of Contemporary Life: Reconciling Legal Rulings with a Changing World

Q: Fiqh is a foundational system for managing people’s daily affairs based on religious texts. But in a world where values and variables are constantly changing, how can fiqh remain relevant and compatible with everyday life?

Montazir Qa’im: There are two views on this — a maximalist and a minimalist one.

The maximalist view holds that no matter what problem someone faces, they must consult a jurist. Fiqh, according to this view, has an answer for everything, from cradle to grave. This approach has many devoted adherents who support it with certain evidence. One of the chapters in my book addresses this, focusing on the topic of diyāt (blood money). Not long ago, the University of Judicial Sciences held a critical session about it, and two Ayatullahs from Qom were invited to critique the article. I would say about 90% of their time was spent arguing that there are countless narrations saying the Prophet (s) explained everything, that the Sharīʿah contains all things.

They cited narrations so specific that even if someone gets a scratch on their skin, the Imams have explained exactly how much compensation is owed. In short, they backed their view with jurisprudential, narrational, and other traditional sources. One of the outcomes of this perspective is that we should be able to have a complete Islamic economy, or even religiously-grounded disciplines like Islamic sociology, Islamic psychology, or “fiqh-based management”, where everything is to be derived from jurists and jurisprudence. In this paradigm, it is not secular experts in management or sociology who are best suited to respond to contemporary challenges, but jurists. Even the late Imam [Khomeini] used to say: Fiqh is the science of governing society. This perspective has essentially dominated the landscape for over four decades since the revolution — the goal was to give a fiqhī colour to everything. In other words, we would first consult fiqh, and only afterward turn to custom or common practice.

By contrast, the minimalist view holds that the scope of fiqh is, in fact, quite limited, and we should not expect more from it than it can offer. Within this framework, fiqh is capable of addressing only a particular set of issues, primarily those clearly addressed in the Qur’an and ḥadīth, and even many of those were context-specific, rooted in the social conditions of the Prophet’s time.

From this viewpoint, the culture, knowledge, and customs of the Prophet’s era shaped many juridical proofs. But today’s society is vastly different: human knowledge has expanded, cultures have evolved — and thus, much of that evidence has lost its efficacy. According to this view, a significant number of today’s issues are new. If you turn to fiqh for answers, that’s fine, but you may well be met with silence. And when that happens, you must turn to ʿurf. And ʿurf, unlike fiqh, is built on contemporary knowledge, experience, and cultural understanding, not rooted in traditional jurisprudence.

So as I’ve said before, we need to turn to ʿurf on these matters. The scope of reference to ʿurf is far broader than that of fiqh. Personally, I adhere to the second view. One of the chapters in my book addresses the process of ijtihād, that is, the path a jurist must take to derive a ruling from the Qur’an and Sunnah. In that article, I demonstrate that even jurists themselves mostly follow customary, rational procedures, even when engaging in jurisprudential derivation.

Q: The title of your book is “The Alignment of Jurists with the Rational People.” In your view, what is the necessity of this alignment?

Montazir Qa’im: The greatest friction we observe today in the realm of fiqh is the friction between jurisprudence and rational custom. When fiqh seeks to operate in society, to be implemented or theorized, it faces a powerful counterpart: the rational people. And in many cases, we see rulings that, from the public’s point of view, seem irrational.

Q: Some of the articles in this book attempt to assess this relationship: Are fiqh and rationality in conflict? Or not?

Montazir Qa’im: What I try to demonstrate in the book is this: jurists do not stand in opposition to the rational public. Rather, they walk alongside them, with cooperation and tolerance.

Q: You’ve said that jurists today, in light of rapid societal changes, must approach matters with a more ʿurfī perspective. But how practical is this view? What’s the chance of it being implemented in real life?

Montazir Qa’im: Over the past forty-plus years since the revolution, the dominant fiqhī approach has been the prevailing one. So we haven’t had much opportunity to implement the kind of approach I’m advocating. That said, take one of the articles in this book on diyāt as an example. It shows how this area was deeply shaped by the customs of its own time, a custom that no longer exists. For example, in Islam, compensation is measured in things like camels, cows, sheep, Yemeni garments, silver coins, and gold dinars, but today, none of these function as currency or standard measures.

Back in the Prophet’s era, that was the common ʿurf, but it no longer holds weight. Even though damages were assessed then, how compensation was calculated for injury, can’t simply be applied today. The metrics and expectations have changed. In short, the temporal and cultural contexts have shifted. And thus, those old customs can no longer serve as reliable foundations for contemporary legal judgments.

Q: What happens to religious texts under this view?

Montazir Qa’im: For a devout and practicing Muslim, the first question that arises is precisely this: If most of my life is to be guided by customs and the understanding of rational people, then what is the role of religious texts and our religion? This creates a sense of contradiction — that if one is to give importance to custom and reason, then one must set aside religion and the Sharī‘ah. And if one wishes to hold fast to the Sharī‘ah, then one must abandon custom and reason.

All the efforts to discover a “third way” are meant to reconcile these two seemingly conflicting elements and to argue that there is in fact no contradiction or tension between them. We accept all religious texts. However, the religious texts that express legal rulings were formulated for circumstances whose conditions and context have since changed.

For example: when the Prophet issued rulings related to camels, Yemeni cloths, or dirhams and dinars for paying blood money, we must consider the circumstances in which those rulings were issued. Now that 1400 years have passed and these items are no longer in circulation, can we continue to place all responsibility on the Prophet and claim that he prescribed these same rulings for our time as well, and that we are bound to enforce them? That is a hard claim to defend. It amounts to saying that the Prophet wanted us to enforce the same 1400-year-old Arab culture of his time, in every era and every part of the world.

Can we really accept today that the Prophet expected all Muslims living in modern Europe to implement the prevailing culture of 7th-century Arabia — or that diyāt should still be paid using camels? Another example: One of the commonly discussed rulings in our jurisprudence is the impurity of non-Muslims. But in what kind of society was this ruling issued? Was that not a society 1400 years ago, in which a strict class hierarchy was in place? There were first- and second-class humans. There were slaves. Discrimination was embedded in the Arab way of life — both religious and gender-based discrimination. Women were not even considered comparable to men.

Now imagine lifting these rulings out of their original context and applying them in a completely different cultural setting, one that is inherently in conflict with them. This is unacceptable. The ruling no longer matches the subject (mawḍūʿ) it was meant for. This is the central argument of the book: If you want to attribute a divine ruling (ḥukm) to a subject, you must be sure that the subject is the same one the Lawgiver had in mind when issuing the ruling.

Most jurists spend their time deriving the ruling from Qur’anic verses and Hadith. Fine — we accept and obey the ruling. But what that ruling applies to — in other words, identifying the subject — is something that must be determined by common sense and custom (‘urf). When the Prophet was sent, the prevailing social structure in Arabia was tribal — clans like Aws and Khazraj, each with their own leaders. But now, fourteen centuries later, tribal systems no longer govern our societies. Is it reasonable to say that Islamic governance today must still be structured on a tribal basis?

Q: You also discussed the people’s right to command and forbid their religious rulers. Does the government still recognize this right today?

Montazir Qa’im: Yes, it is absolutely legitimate — and in fact, necessary. But the question is: To what extent can the government tolerate the people’s enjoining and forbidding? That’s another issue. You should ask this of journalists, political activists, and parties: How costly is it for them to speak truth to power? When we say it is legitimate, we mean that there should be no cost to doing it. When people oversee the actions of rulers, point out their mistakes, and give moral directives — how much harm or loss do they face in return?

That’s the true test of whether a government is religious: to what extent does it allow and value the people’s ability to command what is right and forbid what is wrong, and to monitor its conduct?

Q: So your point is — to what extent does the system recognize this right for the people?

Montazir Qa’im: The Sharī‘ah does recognize it. But whether or not the government recognizes it — that’s a different question.

Q: I am speaking of the fusion of the two elements you mentioned: governance and the Sharī‘ah.

Montazir Qa’im: Religious governance is not an all-or-nothing matter — it’s relative. The question is: to what extent can governance truly be religious? It may be only minimally religious. So what is our criterion? If our standards are based on religion, then we must evaluate to what degree the actual function of governance aligns with religion.

One such criterion is how much the government values the people’s right to supervise, advise, and command or forbid — which are legitimate and religiously sanctioned rights. From this perspective, to the extent that a regime disregards these rights, it is not religious. So we shouldn’t just speak of “the fusion of governance and religion”, we have standards by which we can assess whether that fusion has taken place and whether it has rendered the governance truly religious.

Another criterion — discussed in one of the articles in this book — is the rights of the poor. In a religious society, even relative poverty should not exist, let alone absolute poverty. The poor, according to Islamic law, have the right to sue the government. That’s also a standard by which we determine whether governance has fused with religion. We must ask: in this “religious government,” does poverty exist? To the extent that poverty exists, religious governance does not. To the extent that the poor are silenced and cannot raise claims against the government or demand their rights, the governance is not religious. The same applies to economic and judicial justice.

Q: How can this perspective be interpreted and put into practice? After all, many of the poor and oppressed live among us.

Montazir Qa’im: Whoever said that the current governance is religious? What I am saying is that we need criteria to measure how religious a government is. We must weigh its religiousness using a standard or a scale, and those standards should emerge from religion itself: the Qur’an and the narrations. The very issue of enjoining good and forbidding evil is a duty of the people with respect to those in power. So we cannot say: because one person is pious, a jurist, devout, ascetic, or whatever else you want to call them, and because they are at the head of government, then the government must be religious. That is no valid criterion. In fact, it is not a criterion at all.

It is not correct to say that just because a religious and devout person is leading the government, then the entire system is religious, and therefore all of its features, including its poverty, discrimination, and oppression, must also be considered religious. No! That is our mistake. Nowhere in our religion — neither in the Qur’an nor in the narrations — does it say that once a religious person is in charge, everyone else can rest easy and go to sleep. Two articles in this book emphasize that the people must vigilantly supervise the administration of society, even under a religious leader.

Q: You’ve highlighted some meaningful standards. But how do these elements relate to today’s society?

Montazir Qa’im: Today, these ideas can be implemented individually and collectively, such as through the oversight of political parties and civic organizations over the government, and these forms of oversight also have religious legitimacy. But the question is: to what extent do such things exist? That’s another discussion. I haven’t worked extensively on that angle. Even what I have written took considerable effort to get published. I recited many khatms of Aman Yujīb just to have these pieces appear in journals. I had to cut out many parts. They would say: don’t include this person’s name, or don’t cite that book…

Q: To what extent is coercion in practicing the sharī‘ah applied in a religious government?

Montazir Qa’im: Coercion in practicing the sharī‘ah is tied to the well-known debate: can people be forced into Paradise? Some people argue that yes, it’s possible, that we should force people into Paradise. They believe people are averse to religious obligations, but we know what’s good for them, and since they don’t realize it, we have to impose what’s in their best interest upon them. This approach has its supporters, people who’ve advocated it for many years.

However, this article clarifies that we have no right to do such a thing. We have no right to impose the sharī‘ah, even though it is good, beneficial, and leads to eternal salvation, through coercion. And if people don’t comply, we have no right to punish them for it. Spiritual perfection and closeness to God can only happen through free will, not force.

For instance, if you force a woman to wear a headscarf, that does not bring her closer to God. That headscarf will not build Paradise for her. The headscarf only leads to Paradise when a woman chooses it freely and consciously under conditions that allow for real choice. Closeness to God and entrance into Paradise require acts done from free will. We cannot strip people of that freedom.

Of course, if the majority of people in a society are religious and they establish a religious government, then they may pass and implement religious laws. But this is limited to social matters — not people’s private lives. They may enact regulations for social conduct so long as a significant majority of people want such laws applied in public. But when people no longer want it, such laws should not be enforced. Even then, it is not necessarily the case that if a society doesn’t enforce religious rulings publicly, it becomes irreligious. People may still be Muslim but choose not to enforce a specific rule. Take the example of hijab, which is said to be a religious obligation. Someone might say: “I accept Islam, I am religious, but I do not wish to practice this particular ruling.”

Just like how some Muslims lie — does that make them non-Muslim? Of course not. Lying doesn’t make someone a disbeliever. There are Muslims who lie and backbite. There are also unveiled Muslims. So coercion and compulsion have no place in the sharī‘ah.

Q: Where is it permissible to use force in enjoining good and forbidding evil?

Montazir Qa’im: In conventional jurisprudence, the duty to enjoin good and forbid evil has three stages: the heart, the tongue, and the hand (i.e., physical action). This means: first, disapprove of the wrong internally; second, speak out against it; and if they still don’t listen, use physical force.

However, this article argues that such a three-stage model is not found in the narrations. There’s a constant effort to promote the idea that you can use force against someone who drinks alcohol or doesn’t wear the veil. But this article shows that there is no such thing as “forbidding with the hand” in Islam — at least not in the form people think. What we actually have is a single stage: verbal enjoining and forbidding.

As for the third so-called stage in narrations — denouncing evil with the hand — it means something else. It refers to expressing the ugliness of the wrong, not physically stopping people. You are meant to demonstrate the wrongness of a lie — not by shutting someone’s mouth, but by embodying the truth yourself. “Denouncing” means doing something yourself to highlight what’s right. Always speak truthfully, and by your consistent example, show others the benefit of honesty — not by using force or coercion.

1. Source
2. Source