Portal:Islam/Selected article/29

Various sources of Islamic law are used by Islamic jurisprudence to elucidate the Sharia, the body of Islamic law. The primary sources, accepted universally by all Muslims, are the Qur'an and Sunnah. The Qur'an is the holy scripture of Islam, believed by Muslims to be the direct and unaltered word of Allah. The Sunnah consists of the religious actions and quotations of the Islamic Prophet Muhammad and narrated through his Companions and Shia Imams. However, some schools of jurisprudence use different methods to judge the source's level of authenticity. As Islamic regulations stated in the primary sources do not explicitly deal with every conceivable eventuality, jurisprudence must refer to resources and authentic documents to find the correct course of action. According to Sunni schools of law, secondary sources of Islamic law are consensus among Muslims jurists, analogical deduction, al-Ra'y; independent reasoning, benefit for the Community and Custom. Hanafi school frequently relies on analogical deduction and independent reasoning, and Maliki and Hanbali generally use the Hadith instead. Shafi'i school uses Sunnah more than Hanafi and analogy more than two others. Among Shia, Usuli school of Ja'fari jurisprudence uses four sources, which are Qur'an, Sunnah, consensus and aql. They use ijma under special conditions and rely on aql (intellect) to find general principles based on the Qur'an and Sunnah, and use usul al-fiqh as methodology to interpret the Qur'an and Sunnah in different circumstances, and Akhbari Jafaris rely more on Hadith and reject ijtihad. According to Momen, despite considerable differences in the principles of jurisprudence between Shia and the four Sunni schools of law, there are fewer differences in the practical application of jurisprudence to ritual observances and social transactions.