The Status of Moral Considerations in Islamic Jurisprudential Reasoning — An Article by Abolghasem Fanaei

Whether moral considerations actually bear or ought to bear on reasoning — and under what conditions such reasoning retains its validity — is one of the most important questions in the epistemology and hermeneutics of Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh). The question is not merely theoretical: systematic moral reform within fiqh cannot proceed without a rigorous answer. This article examines it from both descriptive and normative standpoints.
Descriptively, I offer a systematic articulation of the role moral considerations actually play in the prevailing traditional methodology of fiqh — a position that, while widely practiced, has not previously been made explicit in this form. I argue that within this framework, moral considerations carry no independent epistemic weight in legal reasoning; and where any role is conceded, it is conditional upon certainty (qatʿ).
Normatively, I advance a novel argument: moral considerations — even when certain — do not by themselves justify a belief in the existence of a ruling (ḥukm) in the divine law. Yet they can perform a significant and underappreciated gatekeeping function in three distinct respects, even when they are merely probable (ẓannī): they can ground a belief in the absence of a ruling that conflicts with them; they can block recourse to transmitted textual evidence (adilla naqliyya) incompatible with moral constraints, thereby precluding endorsement of morally impermissible rulings; and they can prevent the application of practical legal principles (uṣūl ʿamaliyya) in morally unacceptable directions.
By mapping the precise contours of these roles, I aim to lay the groundwork for a more rigorous account of how jurisprudential reasoning can and should be morally reformed.