Oathing on the Cause and the Outcome in Al-Ḥanafīyah

Abstract

God, the Almighty, commanded us to judge among people with justice, in order to erase injustice and to not to oppose to the scale that God has set up for the creation uphold rightness. This becomes manifested through the application of the rules of the Islamic judiciary  and giving everyone his/her right. One of the most important means that the judge is indispensable to in ruling between two opponents in a judicial case is the judicial oath. So, the judge asks the defendant to vow in case the prosecutor's evidence is missing. In order for the vow to achieve its purpose for which it was intended in bringing the justice to its owner,  the judge must determine the thing that the defendant will vow on; will he/she swear on the lawsuit’s outcome or the lawsuit’s cause?; as this has a great impact on determining the course of the lawsuit and reaching justice.

Therefore,  this study came to clarify the concept of the judicial oath,  the cause,  the outcome and the lawsuit, in addition to displaying the ruling on the oathing on the outcome and the cause as per the Hanafi imams. Also, the study clarifies the cases where oathing on the outcome is primary to oathing on the cause, and the cases where oathing on the cause is  primary to oathing on the outcome. Among the most important outcomes reached by the study is that oathing on the outcome precedes oathing on the cause if the cause is raised by leverage and does not cause harm to the plaintiff that he/she does not deserve. Nonetheless, if the cause is raised by leverage or causes harm to the plaintiff when oathing on the outcome,  there is no doubt that oathing on the cause is primary in that case, as there is a disagreement among the scholars over the ruling of the claimed issue.

The nature of the research required the use of the two approaches: the inductive and the analytical.