Quran and Worship Course content:

This course is taught six hours per week in the second semester, comprising four theoretical hours and two practical/training hours.

It covers:

1) Selected Texts from the Holy Quran (2 hours): Students learn the correct way to read and understand these texts. They practice in small groups, and attendance is taken. The aim is to refine students’ pronunciation of Arabic correctly through the Quranic text and to teach them how to understand the meanings of Arabic words.

2) Introduction to the sciences of Islamic Sharia (2 hours): This includes the fundamentals of Quranic sciences and the basics of Islamic Sharia.

3) Islamic Worship from the Holy Quran and Sunnah (2 hours): Purification, Prayer, Zakat (charity), Fasting, and Hajj (pilgrimage). The rulings for these acts are presented, highlighting their importance in shaping the Islamic personality and their profound impact on the Muslim’s conduct.

Course Contents of Personal Status and Inheritance:

This course is taught for four hours per week during the first semester and covers the following topics: Marriage: its definition and legal rulings.

Engagement: its rulings, consequences, and how to break it off.

The pillars of marriage, its conditions for validity, and the stipulations for its validity.

Prohibited marriages.

Guardianship and witnessing in the marriage contract.

Compatibility in the marriage contract.

The types of marriage contracts and the rights arising from them.

The dowry and its rulings.

Divorce: its definition, rulings, pillars, conditions, and types.

Revocation of divorce: its definition, ruling, and proof.

Judicial separation and its rulings. Khul’ (divorce initiated by the wife) and its rulings.

Consequences arising from it.

Ila’ (a vow of abstinence from marital relations): its definition and rulings.

Consequences arising from it.

Zihar (a form of divorce): its definition, rulings, and consequences.

Li’an (mutual imprecation): its definition, rulings, and consequences.

Separation due to apostasy.

Annulment of marriage due to the option of reaching puberty. Termination due to incompetence.

Number, definition, and rulings.

Course content for Quranic and Sunnah Sciences:

This course is taught for four hours per week during the first semester. It covers:

The definition of the Quran, the origins and development of Quranic sciences, Meccan and Medinan revelation, the reasons for revelation, the compilation of the Quran, Quranic readings, clear and ambiguous verses, the miraculous nature of the Quran, Quranic translation, the most famous books of exegesis and Quranic sciences, and abrogation.

The authority of the Sunnah, the methodologies of hadith scholars, the most famous works, types of hadith sciences, the principles of narration, hadith terminology: mutawatir and ahad, sahih, hasan, da’if, matruk, mu’allaq, mursal, mudallas, mu’allal, mudraj, maqlub, shadhdh, mahfuz, mawquf, maqtu’.

Major hadith collections: Bukhari, Muslim, Sunan, Musnad, Muwatta’, and hadith verification, refutation of misconceptions about the Quran and Sunnah.

Methods of hadith verification and their most important books: hadith terminology, the highest narrator, the subject of the hadith, hadith terminology, hadith description.

The characteristics of the hadith.

Course Outline for Tafsir and Hadith:

This course is taught for four hours per week during the second semester and covers:

Selected texts from the Holy Quran and Sunnah regarding sales, usury, debt contracts, rulings on mortgages, leasing, trusts, and testimony, including their analysis and the derivation of legal rulings.

Selected texts from the Holy Quran and Sunnah regarding punishments (adultery, slander, theft, drinking alcohol, highway robbery, rebellion, apostasy, retaliation, and blood money).

Selected texts from the Holy Quran and Sunnah regarding adjudication, claims, and evidence.

Selected texts regarding food, drink, oaths, and vows.

Course content of Principles of Islamic Jurisprudence (Usul al-Fiqh)

This course is taught for four hours per week during the first semester and covers:

Introducing the principles of jurisprudence and the fundamentalist schools, distinguishing between the science of the principles of jurisprudence and Islamic jurisprudence, and introducing the sources of Islamic legislation.

Transmitted Sources: The Holy Qur’an: its definition, characteristics, miraculous nature, variant readings, texts (definitive and probable), and the rulings it contains.

The Prophetic Sunnah: its definition, authority, relationship to the Holy Qur’an, and its categories based on its transmission, authenticity, and weakness.

Consensus (Ijma’): its definition, evidence for its legitimacy, its pillars, types, basis, possibility, and the rulings on its abrogation.

The Statement of a Companion: its definition, types of statements attributed to a Companion, and scholarly opinions on using the statement of a Companion as evidence.

The Laws of Previous Prophets: its definition and scholarly opinions on using the laws of previous prophets as evidence.

Intellectual Sources: Analogy (Qiyas): its definition, its legal validity, objections raised against it, the pillars of analogy: the original case, the new case, the effective cause, the ruling, and the methods of determining the effective cause. Types of analogy.

Juristic Preference (Istihsan): its definition, its legal validity, its types, and scholars’ opinions on using it as a legal argument.

Public Interest (Maslaha Mursala): its definition, the evidence for its legal validity, its types according to Islamic law, and its types according to its strength.

Custom (Urf): its definition, its types, its categories, its legal validity, and applications of custom.

Blocking the Means (Sadd al-Zarai): its definition, its opening, its closing, its types, and scholars’ opinions on its application.

Presumption of Continuity (Istishab): its definition, its legal validity, scholars’ opinions on its application, its types, and applications of using custom as a legal argument.

Islamic Ruling (Al-Hakm al-Shar’i): its definition, its categories (obligatory and discretionary, and the difference between them), the obligatory ruling, the discretionary ruling: its categories, the condition, the impediment, validity, invalidity, and voidness, the obligation, and the dispensation.

Rules of deduction: Command, prohibition, specific and general, absolute and qualified, literal and figurative, explicit and implicit.

Denotations of words: Implications of expression, allusion, inferred meaning, clear and implicit terms, explicit and implicit meanings.

Legal principles: Principles of jurisprudence, legal maxims, objectives of Islamic law.

Conflict and preference, abrogation, legal capacity: Capacity to exist, capacity to act, impediments to legal capacity.