Week 5 : Understanding of Maqasid al-shariah

 Assalamualaikum w.b.t everyone !

Welcome back to my blog! I am grateful for the time you have invested in reading my blog post 😊

    For this week, I have learned about Maqasid Al Shariah. Before we go further, I know you guys must be wondering what actually the meaning of Maqasid Al Shariah is. In their traditional definition, maqasid al-shariah are the purposes, objectives, principles, goals, ends and intents of Islamic jurisprudence. The maqasid approach insists on the centrality of the underlying principles of Islam, and distinguishes between those aspects of the faith that are immutable as opposed to those that are open to interpretation in accordance with time, space, context, intents and cultures.

There are 5 pillars of Maqasid Al Shariah:

• Protection of Faith or religion (din)

• Protection of Life (nafs)

• Protection of Lineage (nasl)

• Protection of Intellect ('aql)

• Protection of Property (mal)

How do we apply this Maqasid Al-shariah?

Here some example of acts that I could share based on my understanding on this week’s class, that are related to the preservations of the above are defending Islam against enemies’ attack (faith), build the hospital (lineage), provide education (Intellect), and distribution of wealth in fairly manner through Zakat(property). These are the objectives which are must and basic for the establishment of welfare in this world and the world hereafter in the sense that if they are ignored then the coherence and order cannot be established and fasad (chaos and disorder) will prevail in this world and there will be obvious loss in the world hereafter.

    Lastly in general, we agreed that the maqasid al-shariah is to serve the public interests and to prevent harm. This main objective of shariah is governed by the principles and concepts of mercy and guidance. Thus, all aspects of human life must conform to the objectives of shariah based on its priorities namely essentials (dharuriyyah), complimentary (hajiyyah) and embellishment (tahsiniyyah).

That's all from me for now, thank you !