Comparative Study of Childbearing Command in Common and Imamiyah Jurisprudence Based on Objectives of Shari’a

Childbearing in the Islamic jurisprudential system, both in Imamiyah and in Sunni schools, is desirable and necessary. However, considering the present situation of the society and the changes in the government's decree regarding childbearing and birth control, it is necessary to study the childbearing verdict in jurisprudence and compare the different views of Imamiyah and Sunni schools. The comparative study of childbearing shows that Sunni jurists, both pre-Shatebi scholars such as Abu Ishaq Shirazi, Imam al-Harameyn, Ghazali, and post- Shatebi jurists, especially contemporary scholars, in their juridical deductions and Ijtihād reflection of texts, consider generation preservation as one of the essential purposes of the Islamic Shari'a. Some Imamiyah scholars who consider the Shari'a as purposeful and maintain that the Shari'a purposes can be extracted from the texts in accordance with the on-going situations, and recoursing to the intellect and other implicit ways, regard childbearing as the purposes of Shari’a. Childbearing as one of the ways of realization and determination of maintaining a generation is expedient in both schools of jurisprudence, obligatory and non-obligatory. The present article, in addition to interreligious comparison of the relationship between childbearing and the expediency of preserving the generation as one of the essential purposes of the Islamic Shari'a, explains the childbearing verdict through threefold situations of permissibility, desirability, and collective duty.