Qiyas (Analogical Reasoning)

Everywhere in the Muslim world, there is an ongoing tension between the forces of rigid conservatism and of modernity and reform. At the core of this tension is the corpus of Islamic law (fiqh), which even many conscientious Muslims admit that bulk of the corpus has become asynchronous with the spirit and vision of Islam on one hand and the contemporary challenges and realities on the other. The countries proclaiming themselves to be "Islamic" by instituting and implementing the traditional corpus of Islamic laws are finding that even the common Muslim mass, which usually endears Islam deeply, is finding a serious burden in coping with the weight of the details of the laws, often based on rigid or literal interpretation.

What is now commonly identified or understood as Shari'ah and presented as divinely sanctioned is actually mostly interpretations of fallible human beings, even though such human enterprise is, as claimed, informed by the two primary sources, the Qur'an and the Sunnah. For Muslims, the Qur'an is direct revelation from God and it is divine and infallible. The Sunnah or hadith is relied upon for deducing much of the laws and codes in detail. Even though the hadith scholars have done a most appreciable work in coming up with collections of hadiths and their authentication, hadith in itself it is not divine and infallible. The other two sources of Islamic laws are ijma' (consensus) and qiyas (analogical reasoning).

"The Qur'an is the primary source of law. The other three sources, i.e., the Sunnah, ijma' and qiyas have been stamped with the revelatory character. ... Qiyas derives its value from these sources; hence it is indirectly infallible

Some Pertinent Basics of Qiyas

The Qur'an is not quite a compendium of laws and codes. Actually, only a very small portion of the Qur'an relates to specific guidance establishing what is permissible and what is prohibited. Beyond setting some principles, norms and parameters, a commonly accepted position of Islamic fiqh is that except what is categorically prohibited, the default guidance of the Qur'an is permissibility. As al-Qaradawi explains:

“The first asl', or principle, established by Islam is that the things which Allah has created and the benefits derived from them are essentially for man's use, and hence are permissible. Nothing is haram except what is prohibited by a sound or explicit nas (i.e. text) from the Law-Giver. ... He has prohibited only a few things for specific reason, ... In Islam the sphere of prohibited things is very small, while that of permissible things is extremely vast. There is only a small number of sound and explicit texts concerning prohibitions, while whatever is not mentioned in a nas as being lawful or prohibited falls under the general permissibility of things and within the domain of Allah's favor.”

There is a close relationship between ijma' and qiyas though. Ijtihad is what makes Islamic jurisprudence dynamic, and qiyas brought some discipline to the applied human reasoning to determine what is Islamically acceptable and what is not for things or situations that are not already covered by the other three sources. However, for the result of a qiyas to be broadly accepted, it also had to be validated by ijma'. If validated, most Muslim scholars have placed high value on qiyas as a methodology.

"The procedure of analogy is devised to eliminate the free use of reason and independent value judgments."


Diversity of views about Qiyas

Even though the Sunnis generally accept qiyas as one of the four sources of Islamic jurisprudence, there is considerable disagreement about what qiyas is, its scope, the method of validation, etc.
"After the Companions, jurists differed over the extent to which analogy could be relied upon. ... The question of analogy has caused a good deal of controversy."
Just like most aspects of Islamic jurisprudence have no consensus, the same is true about qiyas. Each school has its own definition with special emphasis or nuance.

" The root meaning of the word qiyas ... is 'measuring', 'accord', and 'equality'.It is defined by the Hanafites as 'an extension of law from the original text to which the process is applied to a particular case by means of a common illah, which cannot be ascertained merely by interpretation of the language of the text.'.
To Malikites, it is 'the accord of a deduction with the original text in respect of the illah or effective cause of its law'.
For the Shafites it is 'the accord of a known thing with a known thing by reason of the equality of the one with the other in respect of the effective cause of its law. To Shafi'i, qiyas and ijtihad (interpretation) are two terms with the same meaning."