FARD AL-‘AYN. Almost all religio-legal obligations in shari`ah (the divine law) are fard al-`ayn (obligations on the individual), that is, they must be discharged personally by the individual; they cannot be performed vicariously. The term fard al-`ayn is more common among the non-Hanafi schools of law. For the Hanafiyah, fard is ordinarily an epistemological term
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The verb faqiha denotes in nontechnical contexts a correct understanding of matters that are not readily grasped. The fifth form of the verb, tafaqqaha, occurring in the Qur’an (9.122), refers to the close study and understanding of a specific issue. In the technical legal usage of the eighth century, fagih (pl., fuqaha’) signified an expert
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FAMILY PLANNING. High population growth rates over the past forty years coupled with worries about economic and social development have spurred debate on the use of family planning measures by Muslims. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, populations in Muslim countries grew slowly as high birth rates were offset by high mortality rates. Following
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FAMILY LAW. Issues of law affecting the family, known as family law, are central to the shari `ah. The Qur’anic verses which concern themselves with issues of law deal to a great extent with matters affecting the family. Many of the hadith concentrate on the same area, and it is therefore no surprise to find
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FAMILY. The basic social unit of Islamic society is the family. If Islam can be described as the soul of Islamic society, then the family might be seen metaphorically as its body. For thousands of years, the family has been the principal focus of people’s emotional, economic, and political identity. Changes in the nineteenth and
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FAKHREDDIN, RIZAEDDIN (17 January 1859-11 April 1936), Volga-Ural Muslim religious scholar and reformist. One of the most prominent Muslims of the Volga-Ural region of the Russian empire, Fakhreddin was born on 17 January 1859 in Kichu Chati village in Samara guberniya, the son of Sayfetdin, the village mullah, and Ma-huba, the daughter of Ramkol Maksud,
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FADLALLAH, MUHAMMAD HUSAYN ((November 16, 1935 – July 4, 2010), Lebanese Shi’i religious scholar and a leader, of Hizbullah (Party of God). Born in Najaf, Iraq, into a Shi’i family from `Aynata, a village in southern Lebanon close to Bint Jubayl, Fadlallah’s father was an `alim (religious scholar) in the Iraqi shrine and university city,
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