EMERGENCY CRITERIA FROM THE MAQĀṢID PERSPECTIVE

Abstract

Ulemas agrees that emergency conditions result in legal relief, but they use different methods in formulating emergency criteria. An emergency is a distress condition that threatens the primary needs in human life, but sometimes in an individual case, the secondary need rise to become primary. Therefore, an emergency criterion includes both primary and secondary that rise to become primary. This fact led Ibn 'Abd al-Salam to use the approximation method. If the secondary distress conditions approach the primary distress conditions, this is a reason to apply for legal relief. As for al-Syāṭibī, he formulated an emergency condition based on the customs in society. This study found that these two methods integrated into two stages of research in contemporary ijtihad methods. The first is the descriptive stage, in which the mujtahid describes the reality so the emergency becomes concrete and measurable. The second is the prescriptive stage, in which emergency conditions can convert into the Sharia emergency criteria that mujtahid can determine for legal relief.