Arts and Humanities, Law, Religious studies, Political Science and International Relations
2
Scopus Publications
Scopus Publications
Judicial Training in Saudi Arabia: From an Unmodified to Codified System Sümeyra Yakar, Emine Yakar Religions, 2024 The precise description of the roles and qualifications of Saudi judges (qāḍī) in the legal process assist in understanding the actual practice of jurisprudence. This paper aims to shed light on the jurisprudential procedure and the responsibilities of judges in the past and present Saudi legal system. Although the Saudi judges had freedom to exercise independent reasoning in the process of evaluating cases during the uncodified period before the 2020s, they were required to follow the classical regulations that were transmitted by the previous Ḥanbalī scholars’ textual sources. On the other hand, recent codification attempts provide Saudi scholars with a kind of set of systematized traditional rules and bring standardization in final decisions. Since the rules of codification are directly derived from the main sources (the Qur’an and Sunna) of Islamic law, the Saudi legal system is supposedly governed by the traditional framework of Islamic law, and this semi-independent nature separates it from its counterparts’ dependent codified legal systems. This article elucidates the transformational process of the Saudi legal system from classical implementation to codification. In applying analytical and descriptive methods, the objective of this paper is to investigate the responsibilities and training process of the judges and the jurisprudential procedure in the Saudi legal system.
A critical comparison between the classical divorce types of Hanbalī and Ja‘farī schools Sümeyra Yakar, Emine Enise Yakar Darulfunun Ilahiyat, 2020 Islamic law seeks the harmonious continuation of families and family structure, setting out detailed principles of family life in the main sources of sharī‘a, the Qur‘an and Sunna. That said, the termination of marriage is considered an acceptable solution by Islamic jurists, if the spouses do not fulfil their obligations toward each other due to inharmonious relationship or existing dissention and where there is no hope of reconciliation. This paper seeks to compare the types of divorce within the Ḥanbalī and Ja‘farī schools in order to shed light on the classical period divorce practices and the methodologies of these two schools. Successful divorces are categorised into wājib, mubāh, makrūh, or ḥaram according to their legal validity. In addition to this, divorce practices are also divided into four main types which extend from their implementation and procedural methods; ṭalāq, khulʿ, ṭāliq or tafwīḍ, and tafrīq. The research aims to compare the unilateral divorce right of the man (ṭalāq), woman-initiated divorce (khulʿ), conditional divorce (ṭāliq or tafwīḍ) and judicial termination (tafrīq) by focusing on the opinions of authoritative Ḥanbalī and Ja‘farī scholars. Applying textual comparative methodology and legal perceptual analysis, the study aims to uncover the existent connection between Islamic legal methodologies and different schools when the scholars address any problems and issues related to divorce practice. Although both schools use different methodologies and sources, the similarity of rulings prevail over the differences due to the fact that the marital issues concerning divorce are mainly solved with the main sources (aslī) rather than secondary sources (fer‘ī). This comparative research, therefore, aims to shed lights on the similarities between these schools and to clarify the differences regarding the interpretation of legal sources. At the same time, the paper seeks to identify the convergences and divergences between the divorce practices of the two schools. Comparative analysis of divorce types in Ḥanbalī and Ja‘farī schools intents to offer a broad perspective to explore the contemporary divorce practices in Muslim countries whose citizens are the followers of these schools. Instead of making a general comparison between the Sunnī and Shi‘ī traditions, the research aims to compare the classical Ḥanbalī school which forms the basis of family law in contemporary Saudi jurisprudence with the classical Ja‘farī school which forms the basis of family law in the contemporary Iranian jurisprudence. This comparison brings out the influence of the classical schools upon the modern jurisprudences of Saudi Arabia and Iran.
