Maqasid Al-Shari'ah

"The previous decade witnessed a plethora of books on the subject of maqasid (aims of shari'ah), stressing that Islam's commandments have overarching aims, and that the individual texts of Qur'an and hadith can only be adequality understood within the universal principles of Islam. While the classical work on maqasid is immense, that of Shatibi (d. 1388 C.E.) gained the utmost authority as it theorized for five general aims of shari'ah, which can take one of three levels of priority. Since then, most of the works on the subject of maqasid was a variation on the Shatibi's approach. The major contribution of this book is to marry Ibn Khaldun's perspective with that of Shatibi. In such a way, a new maqasid theory that attends to the insights of history and social sciences was constructed. The proposed theory is marked by a high degree of synthesis and maintained the major categories of Shatibi, but only after redefining and expanding them. Moreover, the new enhanced theory of maqasid is marked by being multidimensional, where the five goals of sharia operate in an open space. In addition to its academic contribution, this new work hopes to have made maqasid more amenable for appreciation and application in our time"--