The Evaluation of Necessity and Need Based Decisions in AAOIFI Islamic Finance Standards from a Islamic Jurisprudence Perspective

Abstract

This study deals with the jurisprudential legitimacy and justification of the decisions based on darurah and need in the Shari'ah standards (al-Maayir al-shar'iyyah) set by the Accounting and Auditing Organization for Islamic Financial Institutions (AAOIFI). In the justification of the rules related to Shari'ah standards, the principles of darurah and need are applied in addition to jurisprudential evidence and methods such as the Qur'an, Sunnah, ijma and qiyas. In the fiqh doctrine, the concepts of darurah and need have different meanings and scope, but they are used interchangeably. The main question of the research is: To what extent are the principles of darurah and need included in Shari'ah standards and to what extent are these principles used appropriately? In this context, the issues justified by concepts or pairs of concepts that point to the content of the words need and darurah in Shari'ah standards were identified. The meanings that Shari'ah standards attribute to these concepts and the framework in which these concepts are used have been investigated. The extent to which the principle of darurah and need is used in the jurisprudential justifications of these issues is explained. In addition, some of the decisions that we think should have been based on the principles of darurah and need were attempted to be included within the scope of nass through forced interpretations. In the jurisprudential justification of some decisions, the use of these principles has been evaluated as inaccurate. It was also determined that the principles of darurah and need were not used for the first time in the jurisprudential justification of some issues in Shari'ah standards; on the contrary, the ruling was already based on the principle of darurah or need in the classical fiqh literature. Thus, during the course of the study, we distinguished between the decisions in which the justification of darurah and need was used in the shari'ah standards by quoting from classical sources and the decisions that were directly based on the justification of darurah and need by the committee in contemporary issues. In the light of our findings, it has been concluded that a moderate method has been determined in the jurisprudential justification of the shari'ah standards, both meeting the needs of the society and using the principle of darurah in its proper place.