Legal Implications For Today Of Al-Ahkam Al- Khamsa
Islam seeks to evaluate all human acts and relationships in terms of their moral beauty (husn) or ugliness (qubh), embracing both the spiritual and the temporal, individual and collective, in public and in private, governed under divine command. This led to the classification of the Five Values (al ahkam al khamsa): obligatory (commission or omission was rewarded), recommended (commission was rewarded but omission was unpunished), permitted (indifferent), disliked (commission unpunished but omission rewarded) and forbidden (rewarding for omission and penalty for commission). The Five Values bear an intimate relationship to Islamic law that characterizes the Muslim world today. It has apparently played an important part in molding the outlook of Muslims.
The value classification is derived from the primary sources ie, the Quran and Sunnah. Even though, the early jurists were extremely cautious in extracting these Values, due to the lapse of some centuries before the Five Values were categorized in this form, there were obvious differences between their usage in the early times and in the classical times. The most authentic explanation for the change appears to be connected with the change in the distinction between the rights of God (huqūq Allāh) and the rights of mankind (huqūq Insān). The rights of God were the formal acts of worship or ibadah whereas the the rights of mankind was concerned with social transactions and relationships and penal sanctions (uqubat).
Although previously the judgments were reserved exclusively for God on the day of Judgment, today the concept that is practiced which existed in the time of al khulafa ar-rashidun where the state or the society could punish any infraction of the rights of God. It is suggested that the distinction between Values that concern the rights of God and those that of the rights of mankind well acquires immediate importance when human beings arrange...