‘Development in jurisprudence is a natural process' NAJRAN – Prince Abdul Aziz Bin Sattam Bin Abdul Aziz, a member of the Higher Judiciary Institute and the Consultation Committee at the Shariah College in Najran, has said that jurisprudential concepts will develop to match the changing world and that the next 15 years will see Shariah colleges graduates move on to purely scientific post-graduate studies such as e-commerce, insurance, marketing and management. Prince Abdul Aziz said that changes in the market inevitably lead to “development in jurisprudential concepts to produce new rules and expand in to their own fields of specialty which are introduced into the curricula.” “This is a continuous cycle and a natural process of development,” the Prince said. “The need for specialist consultations in these areas is governed by the development of the curricula which should be designed in a way to meet these requirements so that qualified graduates can fill the posts,” Prince Abdul Aziz said. According to the Prince, the development of Shariah curricula depends on two factors: “well-grounded preparation”, and “high-level training of students in jurisprudence [fiqh]”. “This means that Shariah graduates must master the principles of jurisprudence to benefit from them with the introduction of these new fields and have the ability to produce correct rulings,” he said. This requires, he added, a strong foundational undergraduate stage at Shariah colleges before students move on to study a Master's degree. “Academically speaking, quality is based on study hours and curricula to produce competent and well-qualified graduates capable of studying a Master's in these modern subjects and then entering the labor market equipped with the new specialized skills,” he said. Prince Abdul Aziz said that Shariah colleges in the Kingdom would meet the requirements of new jobs created by the government in economic and litigation fields, noting that “as the legal culture spreads, so the demand for legal consultation increases”. “The Islamic economy is currently thriving,” he said. “70 percent of economic operations in the Kingdom are Islamic.” “Jurisprudence is only applied in the present age, as a scholar will inevitably gives his ruling on something that is happening now and not in the past, even if he bases his ruling on precedents from history,” the Prince said. “Jurisprudence is by definition contemporary, which means that it can't be applied in the past and is therefore inevitably applied now.”
