The Influence of the Seerah of Muhammad PBUH on Islamic Law and Jurisprudence

Abstract

This paper deals with the great impact of Prophet Muhammad's (ﷺ) life (Seerah) on the formation of Islamic Law (Sharia) and legal science (Usul al-Fiqh) in details. The Seerah is actually a historical account but as well as a practical model that "shows" how the Prophet (ﷺ) enacted Quranic principles in his life. The research is being carried out to understand how the legal interpretations were derived from the Prophet's (ﷺ) true actions and decisions and also how this further shaped the legal areas like in prayer, fasting and family law. In addition, it solves the issue of the Seerah in developments of Ijtihad (scholarly reasoning) for fresh challenges that are faced by Muslim communities. The role of seerah in the process of legal reasoning is stressed in the paper, bringing to the attention the difficulties involved, and highlighting the need to accurately determine the historical context and critically evaluate the reliability of hadith narrations. In the end, it also hints on domains for research that is yet to be discovered which include inter alia; the role of the Seerah in bioethics and environmental welfare.

Keywords: Prophet’s Seerah, Legal System, Environmental welfare, Reasoning, Hadith