 Measures for Diagnosing and Meeting Legal Exigencies in an Islamic System

The present article seeks to cast light on the extent to which a Muslim ruler is legally responsible to suspend the enforcement of Islamic laws (rulings). The knowledge of the criteria as to what is important and what is most important and the hierarchy system of governmental interests can help a Muslim ruler to find his way out of the dilemma between social exigencies and legal exigencies. The knowledge of exigencies and of the mechanisms of change in their fixed or changeable boundaries can be effective in applying Islamic legitimacy on a religious government. In a religious government, the red lines serving to violate or developing the primary criteria, are in close relationship with the main purposes and objectives of the Law, ShariÝah. The basic questions of this research work revolve around the aims and frameworks of a government. Is the Islamic government only responsible to enforce the divine laws or it may be conceived to have other aims and purposes which cannot be ignored in case the divine laws cannot be enforced? What are the mechanisms and means of such a process? To what extent a Muslim ruler can suspend the divine laws. This research seeks to establish the fact that giving priority to certain aims and objectives of the Islamic government over the others, interpretation of expediency, the source and basis of expediency, procedure, means and methodology of discovering and applying expediency, the contributing factors in the discovery and use of expediency are deemed effective in making analysis of the extent to which any political structure in Islam is legitimate and in determining its functions.