A Study of the Opinions of the Early Muslim Jurists in Relation to the People's Demand and the Legitimacy of Government (until the 8th Century)

Legitimacy (of a government) is the most fundamental issue in the political and social realm which is, in fact, concerned with the idea that how a political structure is permitted to exert its rule and why people find it necessary to obey that rule. The same issue has gained tremendous importance to the extent that it subjects social structures to challenge.As far as the jurisprudential (fiqhi) approach is concerned, the question is raised whether the Muslim jurists or faqihs take social authority or guardianship (wilÁyat) and being in political office subject to the will and demands of the majority or not. Due to the fact that such a question has not been raised by the early Muslim jurists, no clear and explicit statement of the matter has been made thus far. However, since faqihs has sought to make the Islamic precepts and judgements clear with considerable degrees of detail and to make use of the general rules in dealing with various subjects, one can make references to the answers given in this regard.However, it should be noted that Muslim jurists have known a government (a rule or reign) by its ruler or governor, thus if they have spoken of rulings about a ruler or governor and his authority, they have actually taken one and the same approach to the question at hand. However, having a cursory glance over the works of these religious scholars makes it clear that they have not considered a ruler’s coming to power as subject to the common consent, but rather, as evidenced by certain works of faqihs, they have not taken people’s disapproval of a ruler coming to power as an obstacle to his reign.