Rational abolition hypothesis criticized from the viewpoints of reason, the Quran and Hadith

The rational abolition theory, which was proposed in the 19th century and developed in the 20th and 21st centuries, postulates that jurisprudence should be based on religious principles but can be adjusted to the contexts and occasions that arise. An important concept underlying this theory is ‘the cultural basis of decrees’. That is to say, nonritual affairs are a part of culture and make up a virtual set of rules in Islam, hence allowed to be abolished and replaced with rational ones. Using a descriptive-analytic method, the present study verifies the theory on the basis of the concept that underlies it. As the results show, for certain reasons, the theory is not credible enough. They include the existence of too many minor cultural cases that are vague due to lack of knowledge of the Jaheli era, applicability of cultural considerations even to ritual affairs (Note that those who advocate the theory believe that rules can be changed by agreement, while most scholars believe ritual rules are fixed), the triple approach of Islam to cultural rules, i.e. maintenance, modification and abolition (with the implication that culture cannot serve as the only factor in this regard), the role of culture as a context where rules are implemented not corroborated, lack of consensus among the scholars in different eras, irreplaceability of Quranic decrees with culturally modified rules, freedom of Quranic rules from time limits and textual evidence in the Quran for the time-inclusiveness of its decrees.