Tuesday 27 October 2009

Final Look at his Qur'anic understanding

Later in the book, Saanei discusses the Quranic view again so it makes sense for me to bring it here as it is a good summary of his viewpoint.

The Quran is the primary source of all legal injunctions, and it is clear that the verse (2:282 as explained in previous blogs) is concerning financial matters (and there are many ahadith that support this point of view, and ijma' supports this as well). The question that must be asked is:

"Is the inequality in financial matters:
1. absolute
2. able-to-be-generalised-to-other matters
3. true for all time
4. not able to be contextualised;

Does it imply that testimony of two women instead of one man is because of the position of a woman AS a woman, or does the verse imply a contextualised ruling, based on the cause* and not on the fact that she is a woman" (Page 87)

*He has noted that the cause is the possibility of forgetting due to the lack of expertise of the general woman at that time.

Saanei's question makes it clear that it does not make sense that all these four extrapolations hold to something that is very specific. He also says that the cause is clear from the grammatical construction of the sentence, and this is confirmed by the fact that two women are sufficient, because one can remind the other. This is a clear indication that the cause is forgetfulness from the women.

Therefore, when the forgetfulness is not present, the ruling does not apply. This tactic is used all the time in jurisprudential discussions and it seems appropriately used here.

Now to ahadith!

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