Expediency and Newly arisen Legal Issues

In the contemporary world, science and technology is developing by moments or seconds. This process involves quite new needs and requirements. To respond to these questions, it is inevitable that we seek new functions for legal rules and theories in the framework of Islamic sources and foundations. The philosophy of Islamic law attaches a capacity to expediency that can play a big role in this regard. The role of expediency in acquiring interests of this world and the next has given a big opportunity to the Islamic law towards recognizing priorities and even prescription of rules. The present article seeks to study briefly the current views concerning expediency in Islamic law. Explaining the domain of expediency in the Shiite and Sunni jurisprudence, the article points to its functional role in the modern world. The newly arisen issues have stimulated the need for Ijtihad on the one hand and there is the danger of being involved in secularization of jurisprudence as a serious limitation for expediency.