Literalism versus rationalism in the house of Islam : a case study of Islamic law

Abstract EN

The conspicuous difference that exists among Muslim Jurists from the formative stage until the contemporary time is not disconnected from the different basic approaches to the interpretation of religious texts, namely, the textualist and rationalist.

This phenomenon has shaped the scholastic contention in virtually all fiqh discourses.

Against this background, this article explores the surface of the aforementioned trends in selected issues relating to the Islamic Law of Succession.

The research adopts historical and analytical approaches.

While the historical approach assists in tracing the development of succession law in Islam, the analytical approach helps in identifying the areas characterized by literalist and rationalist trends and which one between the two is juristically given prominence.

The study discovered that in most of the sampled issues, the rationalist approach triumphed over the literalist.

It also detected that Muslims across the globe have maintained- as far as inheritance is concerned- the implementation of rationalist-based verdicts.