the verification of their content are, by themselves, the object of a science, the science of the traditions. Its critique today is very refined and allows a classification of texts according to their degrees of authenticity. The traditions confirm, clarify and rarely complete the Qur’ānic obligation, prohibitions and recommendations, which are the first source.
4. Approximately between the years 610 and 632 of the Christian Era, the date of Muḥammad’s death (peace be upon him).
5. According to the Qur’ānic verse It is We who have sent the remembrance, and We watch over it. (15:9)
6. Who have given both their names, after their death, to juridical schools.
7. The application of this punishment requires very strict conditions, and particularly a social environment which gives to everyone what is vitally necessary. Theft which is motivated by need is not theft in the sense meant by the Qur’ānic verse.
8. Jurists have different opinions on this question. The counting of “legislative verses” depends upon the degree of interpretation made at the time of their reading (some of these count – according to more extensive interpretations – up to 600 verses).
9. The sciences of the Qur’ān (‘Ulūm al-Qur’ān) are vast. They include a number of domains and require precise types of knowledge: the determination of Makkan and Madinan Revelations, the causes of revelation (for the majority of verses), abrogating and abrogated verses, a perfect mastery of the Arabic language, and so on.
10. In contrast to the usual usage applied in renderings made in the West, the Sharī‘a cannot be reduced to a penal code. The notion is definitely more vast and conveys, beyond even the legislative formulation, the principle of faithfulness to God, to His Prophet and to His revelation. This faithfulness does not lie in literalism, as we are here trying to show.
11. Muhammad Asad (Leopold Weiss, an Austrian Jew who converted to Islam in the 1920s and author of a number of books on Islam as well as a translation of the Qur’ān into English) reminds us that the best commentary (tafsīr) on the Qur’ān is the Prophet’s (peace be upon him) own life.
. 12How many times have I heard remarks to the effect that constant references to the Qur’ān and the sayings of the Prophet (peace be upon him) amount to a relative fundamentalism, and that there is in this a suspected imprisonment of thought, an impossible autonomy for free thinking. These remarks are sometimes made by committed Christians (Catholics or Protestants) or again by intellectuals, who defend in the most determined way, cultural diversity but find themselves vexed and annoyed by this specificity of Muslim thinkers. However, this is an essential trait of the Islamic concept of the world, history and society. Being a participant in the link which exists between God and man, the points of reference are indispensable for orienting thought (this orientation is indeed a given of faith), but it never imprisons thought. On the contrary, they give account of the necessary concern – of requirement – of the finalities which ought to reside in autonomous reason. It is without doubt one of the fundamental points of divergence between Western and Islamic conceptions of liberty, and, therefore, by extension of modernity. For the former a point of reference is a link, an obstacle and a prison; for the latter it is a link, a recognition and a liberation.
13. In the vast field of ijtihād, jurists have made a distinction between types of juridical references and have established priorities. Thus, reasoning by consensus, or ijmā‘, and reasoning by analogy, qiyās (also expressed according to the following expressions, ijtihād jamā‘ī or “effort of collective reasoning” for ijmā‘, and ijtihād fardī or effort of individual reasoning for qiyās) are considered as the most viable sources after the Qur’ān and theSunna. We also have in the domain of enquiry additional references such as consideration of public interest (istiṣlāḥ) or the integration of custom (‘urf). Jurists, if they are unanimous with regard to the priority of the Qur’ān, theSunna and the necessity of ijtihād, have, however, different opinions regarding the status and methodological soundness of other references.
14. See Appendix II: The great current problems of Islam and Muslims.
15. The desire conveyed by the philosopher Michel Serres to see nature – the world – being considered as the subject of a natural control to elaborate, finds great echo in the Islamic concept of the rapport of man with the universe and its elements. Cf. below, Le contrat naturel, 1988. We shall come back to certain of these considerations (see Part Three).
16. In the science of the principles of jurisprudence (‘ilm uṣūl al-fiqh) whose first codifier was Imām al-Shāfi‘ī (767–820).
17. Narrated by al-Ḥākim.
18. Narrated by al-Dāraqṭnī, al-Tirmidhī, Ibn Māja and al-Ḥākim.
19. See on this subject the excellent introduction to these questions in the text of Yusuf al-Qaradawi, The Lawful and the Prohibited in Islam, London: Shorouk International, 1985. See also Uṣūl al-Tashrī‘ al-Islāmī (The Principle of Islamic Legislation), Cairo, 1985.
20. Narrated by Bukhārī and Muslim.
21. The idea of original sin is absent in all Islamic references.
22. The added parenthesis is necessary for the translation to get close to the Arabic meaning. The idea of fearingness conveyed in the end of this verse is not a perfect rendering of “taqwā, yattaqūn”. Here, it is rather a question of intensity of faith when it is marked by humility and love.
23. This verse is the subject of a great number of commentaries. It is also of great interest to the theological discussion concerning fiṭra – the natural aspiration of man towards God or the acknowledgement of the natural essence of submission (Islām) to the Creator. The Sufis have commented upon this verse abundantly and used it. It is not possible for us to tackle here the whole problematic which is relative to this question. We shall limit ourselves to extracting the fundamental idea that, according to Islam, there is in every man an aspiration, an energy which orientates him towards the Creator. This “tendency” is par t of man and of his condition; it is a natural testimony (shah ā da). This idea joins the expression of the historian of religions, Mircea Eliade when he affirms that the sacred “is an element in the structure of human conscience”. Histoire des croyances et des idées religieuses, Bibliothèque historique Payot, 1989, Vol.1 [English translation, A History of