Maslaha in the context of Sharia

Sunni Islam is the largest branch of Islam and the largest religious denomination in the world. It holds that Muhammad did not appoint any successor and that his closest companion Abu Bakr (r. 632–634) rightfully succeeded him as the caliph of the Muslim community, being appointed at the meeting of Saqifa. This contrasts with the Shia view, which holds that Muhammad appointed Ali ibn Abi Talib (r. 656–661) as his successor. Nevertheless, Sunnis revere Ali, along with Abu Bakr, Umar (r. 634–644) and Uthman (r. 644–656) as 'rightly-guided caliphs'.

The term Sunni means those who observe the sunna, the practices of Muhammad. The Quran, together with hadith (especially the Six Books) and ijma (scholarly consensus), form the basis of all traditional jurisprudence within Sunni Islam. Sharia legal rulings are derived from these basic sources, in conjunction with consideration of public welfare and juristic discretion, using the principles of jurisprudence developed by the four legal schools: Hanafi, Hanbali, Maliki and Shafi'i.

Istislah (Arabic: استصلاح, lit. 'to deem proper') is a method employed by Islamic jurists to solve problems that find no clear answer in sacred religious texts. It is related to the term مصلحة Maslaha, or "public interest" (both words being derived from the same triconsonantal root, "ṣ-l-ḥ"). Extratextual pragmatic considerations are commonly accepted in Islamic jurisprudence concerning areas where the Qur'an and the practices of the earliest Muslim generations (Salaf) provide no specific guidance.

Istislah bears some similarities to the natural law tradition in the West, as exemplified by Thomas Aquinas. However, whereas natural law deems good that which is known self-evidently to be good, according as it tends towards the fulfilment of the person, istislah calls good whatever is connected to one of five "basic goods". Al-Ghazali abstracted these "basic goods" from the five legal precepts in the Qur'an and Sunnah—religion, life, reason, lineage (or offspring), and property. In this classical formulation, istislah differs from utilitarianism—"the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people"—because something that results in "the greatest happiness" may infringe any one of the five basic values. Rather than utilitarianism, Istislah bears closer resemblance to deontologicalism.

Sunni Islam is the largest branch of Islam and the largest religious denomination in the world. It holds that Muhammad did not appoint any successor and that his closest companion Abu Bakr (r. 632–634) rightfully succeeded him as the caliph of the Muslim community, being appointed at the meeting of Saqifa. This contrasts with the Shia view, which holds that Muhammad appointed Ali ibn Abi Talib (r. 656–661) as his successor. Nevertheless, Sunnis revere Ali, along with Abu Bakr, Umar (r. 634–644) and Uthman (r. 644–656) as 'rightly-guided caliphs'.

The term Sunni means those who observe the sunna, the practices of Muhammad. The Quran, together with hadith (especially the Six Books) and ijma (scholarly consensus), form the basis of all traditional jurisprudence within Sunni Islam. Sharia legal rulings are derived from these basic sources, in conjunction with consideration of public welfare and juristic discretion, using the principles of jurisprudence developed by the four predominant legal schools: Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi'i and Hanbali.

In Islam and sharia (Islamic law), bidʿah (Arabic: بدعة [ˈbɪdʕæ], lit. 'innovation') refers to innovation in religious matters. The category is further divided into bid'ah al-ibadat and bi'da al-mu'amalat. The first category refers to innovations in sacred matters, such as worship, and are generally forbidden as it violates the textual source of the Quran and the Sunnah. The second refers to innovations in the mundane realm and is often permissible, as long as it does not violate the Sharia.

Linguistically, as an Arabic word, the term can be defined more broadly, as "innovation, novelty, heretical doctrine, heresy". In classical Arabic literature outside of religion, bidʻah has been used as a form of praise for outstanding compositions of prose and poetry. The alternative positive concept for bidah is maslaha.

There exist a number of perspectives on the relationship between the religion of Islam and democracy (the form of government in which political power is vested in the people or the population of a state and democracy) among Islamic political theorists and other thinkers, the general Muslim public, and Western authors.

Many Muslim scholars have argued that traditional Islamic notions such as shura (consultation), maslaha (public interest), and ʿadl (justice) justify representative government institutions which are similar to Western democracy, but reflect Islamic rather than Western liberal values. Still others have advanced liberal democratic models of Islamic politics based on pluralism and freedom of thought. Some Muslim thinkers have advocated secularist views of Islam.

Siyasa (سياسة) is an Arabic term associated with political authority. In pre-modern Islamic literature it was used to refer to statecraft and management of the affairs of the state. This usage has given rise to the sense of "politics" that the word has in modern Arabic. In classical Islamic works of Greek-influenced political theory, such as al-Farabi's al-Siyasa al-Madaniyya, the term refers to a branch of philosophy that studies the art of managing a polity. In Sunni Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh), the term appears in the phrase siyasa shar'iyya, which literally means governance according to sharia. The phrase refers to the doctrine, sometimes called the political dimension of Islamic law, which was elaborated in the late medieval period in an attempt to harmonize Islamic law with the practical demands of statecraft. The doctrine emphasized the religious purpose of political authority and advocated non-formalist application of Islamic law if required by expedience and utilitarian considerations. It first emerged in response to the difficulties raised by the strict procedural requirements of Islamic law, which rejected circumstantial evidence and insisted on witness testimony, making criminal convictions difficult to obtain in courts presided over by qadis (sharia judges). In response, Islamic jurists permitted greater procedural latitude in limited circumstances, such as adjudicating grievances against state officials in the mazalim courts administered by the ruler's council and application of "corrective" discretionary punishments for petty offenses. However, under the Mamluk sultanate, non-qadi courts expanded their jurisdiction to commercial and family law, running in parallel with sharia courts and dispensing with some formalities prescribed by fiqh. Further developments of the doctrine attempted to resolve this tension between statecraft and jurisprudence. In later times it has been employed to justify legal changes made by the state in view of public interest, as long as they are not contrary to sharia. It was invoked by Ottoman rulers to promulgate a body of administrative, criminal, and economic laws known as qanun.