Construction, Maintenance, and Restoration of Religious Minorities’ Places of Worship in the View of Imāmī Jurisprudence

The peaceful coexistence of citizens in an Islamic society can appear in many forms, one of which is the provision of appropriate bicultural opportunities. Facilitating the affairs of religious minorities’ places of worship is one example of this. However, some critics may portray the granting of permission to non-Muslims, in this case, to be incorrect as it relies on socio-cultural influences or the illusion of cultural domination. Therefore, it is necessary to adopt both rational approaches by examining the theoretical contexts of the discussion and to prevent going to extremes by explaining the position of Islamic sharīʾah in this area. By critically examining the jurisprudential opinions and relying on documentary analysis, the present study has considered the Islamic judge in the agreement based on the interests of the Islamic society to have the necessary and sufficient authority in this regard while rejecting the basis of prohibition and its evidence and based on the principle of freedom of thought and action of citizens in Islamic society. This study examines this problem by presenting the approving proofs for this opinion with a permissible approach and solves it. Therefore, this study first rescinds the principle of prohibition (aṣl al-ḥurmat) in this issue by scrutinizing the four main approving proofs of prohibition in each of the hypotheses of construction, maintenance, and restoration through rejecting the evidence, then relying on the two principles of ibāḥah (permissibility( and concomitance of permission to the object with permission of its essential necessities, it considers the recognition of expediency as the main basis in resolving this problem by the Islamic judge in the circle of the freedom of action and the principle of thought.