The Objectives of Worship
Al Izz b. Abd Al Salam (577 – 660 AH/1181 – 1262 CE)
The Objectives of Worship is a work that discusses the spirit of the customs of worship Muslims believe to be divinely ordained by God. Throughout Islamic history Muslim scholars wrote on the objectives of worship to highlight that the law is never separate from its purpose and spirit. The role of scholarship always has been to derive the will of the lawmaker in the directions revealed in the Quran as well as its application in the practical example of the Prophet Muhammad (s). This process of discovery has always been to maintain harmony between the metaphysical objectives and the mechanics of the letter of the law. The great Andalusian scholar Al-Shatibi (r) goes so far as to say, “The objectives (Al Maqasid) are the soul of deeds… and if a body doesn’t benefit from a soul, then similarly a soul doesn’t benefit from the (actions) of a body.“
Thus, scholars have declared that law (fiqh) without objectives is a law with no soul, and a jurist with no objectives is a jurist with no soul; if we were to even claim he is to be considered a jurist in the first place. It is in this spirit, that the great jurist, the Sultan of Scholars (Sultan al-‘Ulama) Al-‘Izz b. ‘Abd Al-Salam – wrote a critical series of short works that discusses the main objectives of the pillars of worship. These series of books have been collected into one work and entitled, The Objectives of Worship. The work highlights that understanding the objectives of the law is one of the most critical topics to comprehend for both Muslims and non-Muslims alike. Forthcoming translation and commentary by Hasib Noor.
