Review of Nature and Effects of Abrogation in Islamic Law and Statutes

Among the significant issues relating to interpretation of laws is whether a later law will abrogate an earlier one or just qualify it. As it seems that disagreement exists between the meaning of a general and a specific law, it should be discussed whether the specific law qualify the general one or abrogate it. In this article, the nature of abrogation will be discussed. Then, various kinds of relations between a general law and specific one will be examined. Finally, we will conclude that in these cases priority should be given to the specific law in both Islamic law and statutes. This article also concludes that there is a difference between the concept of abrogation in the Islamic law and statutes approved by the parliament. Unlike the Islamic law, when an earlier law is specific and the later one is general, the solution is abrogation.