The Qur'an and the corpus of hadith literature constitute a
comprehensive legal resource that is invoked to regulate the various
aspects of a Muslim believer's life. New situations and contingencies
have prompted the experts in the field to delve into the sources and to
devise methodological devices in usul al-fiqh to enable them to deduce
fresh juridical rulings (fatawa) in order to deal with novel problems
and issues. Consequently, the door of independent research (ijtihad) --
deducing legal rulings in the area of human-divine ('ibadat) and
human-human (mu'amalat) relationships -- has remained open in the
Ja'fari/Shi'ah Ithna 'Ashari/Imami school of thought. This is not a
peculiar feature of the Ja'fari school, and it is presently being argued
in Islamic scholarship that, contrary to the commonly held opinion, the
gate of ijtihad was not considered closed by Sunni jurists of the
4th/10th century.
This work contains the translation of a selection
of new legal rulings that are based on the opinion of the eminent
jurist Ayatullah al-'Uzma al-Sayyid 'Ali al-Husayni al- Seestani, who
resides in Najaf, Iraq, and is the point of reference, or marja', for a
good part of the Shi'ah Ithna 'Ashari community of believers, who revert
to him for guidance. Three of his works, Al-Fatawa al-Muyassarah (FM),
al-Mustahdathat min al-Masa'il al-Shar'iyyah (MMS) and Minhaj
al-Salihin, vol. 1 (MS) were used in compiling the list of
questions/answers and organizing them under appropriate subjects. The
source is clearly marked in regular brackets after the response to each
question to facilitate easy reference to the original Arabic text.
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