The Purpose and Source of Interpretation in Islamic Jurisprudence; a Comparative Study by Pragmatic Interpretation

Interpretive approach refers to the main ideas which construct the interpretive method of a judge or a jurist. We classify the interpretive approaches as intentional and functional attitudes. Feqh (Islamic jurisprudence) proceeds two purposes in interpretation; discovery of divine rules and integrity of interpretation. for these aims, Islamic jurists leads to the text and they are mostly textualist. However, sometimes the context helps the jurist to understand the hidden rules. In other hand, they attend to systemic interpretation, legal essentialism, sovereignty of legal principles and legal deduction. In contrast, pragmatic interpretation justifies the plural views, does not need to deduction and is anti-essentialist. this article tries to state these dimensions of the approaches and study the interpretation of Feqh in a methodological way. In that way, we define the meaning of approach. then introduce the characteristics of each approaches. The result is that, every approach has it’s own advantages and disadvantages. The jurist must choose the one which is more useful for his/her society.