Ma`rifat Kalami

One of the major challenges in contemporary religious studies concerns how religious texts respond to the needs of modern human beings. By proposing the distinction between the essential and accidental aspects of religion, religious intellectuals have suggested numerous criteria for the refinement and rational reconstruction of the Sharia. Employing an analytical-critical method and a predominantly extra-religious approach, the present study critically evaluates these criteria. The findings indicate that the nine proposed criteria—including modern rationality, secular ethics, the values, requirements, and constituents of the modern world (human rights, freedom, equality, democracy, and the ideological neutrality of the state), the customs of the time, empirical realities, religious principles and foundations, the aims and purposes of the Sharia, human expectations of religion, and human nature and dignity—are confronted with fundamental epistemological, methodological, and theological challenges. Reliance on variable and material criteria dependent on human constructs cannot provide a valid basis for determining the boundary between the fixed and variable elements of religion. Furthermore, conflating the realms of thubūt and ithbāt (establishment and verification), disregarding the transhistorical nature of the Sharia, and applying these criteria selectively and arbitrarily cause them to function as tools for reconstructing religion on the basis of external presuppositions rather than as means of discovering its truth. Consequently, the study demonstrates that these criteria lack the requisite validity and demonstrative force to distinguish the essential from the accidental aspects of religion.