Hifz al-Din and Hifz a-Nasl: An Elementary Conceptual Inquiry

Abstract

This article is an attempt to provide a somewhat different reading of two of the foremost constituent concepts of maqasid al-Shari‘ah which form the fundamental category of the al-Shari‘ah objectives known as the necessary universals (al-kulliyyat al-daruriyyah) on which human socio-historical existence essentially depends and whose realization and preservation is on top of the ethico-legal teachings of Islam. Though not usually ranked as immediately succeeding each other in the established taxonomy of Muslim legal theorist (usuliyyun) in their deliberations on maqasid al-Shari‘ah, our semantic and conceptual analysis of hifz al-din and hifz a-nasl has revealed that there good intellectual and practical reasons to depart from that taxonomy by virtue of the essential ontological connection between din and nasl.