God made human beings zher khalīfah, but we are unwilling to trust their judgment.
The khalīfah, the creator’s deputy was endowed with greater intelligence than any other beings and free will, and was expected to make moral choices and exercise administrative authority. In order to prepare the khalīfah for the job, Qur’an seeks to cultivate ethical consciousness in a reader.
Qur’an exercises minimalism in prescribing and proscribing things. Much of the Qur’anic discussion is about matters of belief and general ethical guidelines. No more than 200 out of 6600+ verses have a legislative potential. And that goes very well with the human being’s role as khalīfah, for the khalīfah is expected to make use of the their rational faculties to discern for themself what is best in a given situation.
Yet the historical practice of fiqh (often referred to as Islamic jurisprudence or law) sought to fill the gaps that God had left. No questions were left unanswered. The fuqahā’ (practitioners of fiqh) went too far in elaborating the creator’s will, prescribing and proscribing things in the process, because they could not trust the judgment of human beings.
Further, the Islamic scholarly class promoted (or at least permitted) elitism in the enterprise of knowledge, instead of educating the laity and empowering them to make choices for themselves and taking responsibility for their actions.
The enterprise of fiqh seems totally out of tune with the minimalism of Qur'an and the khilāfah of human beings in ever changing circumstances. The fuqahā’ did not trust human beings; they sought to spoon-feed them by answering all questions, not tentatively, but in the most absolute terms.
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