to the utmost of his ability, and he is not obliged to do what lies beyond his capacity. The ruler must assign him from the public treasury a stipend sufficient for his needs, allowing him to devote himself entirely to the judiciary, just as the Rightly Guided Caliphs provided judges with an ample allowance from the treasury.

The extent of a judge’s powers is determined by prevailing custom in every age according to its circumstances.

Shaykh al-Islām Ibn Taymiyyah said, “The advantages a person gains by virtue of his office—that is, the powers vested in him—have no fixed limit in the law; rather, they are derived from wording, circumstance, and common practice. For whatever the Sharia has not precisely defined is referred to custom, as with safekeeping and physical receipt.”

He also said, “Judicial authority may be partitioned, and a judge need not be learned in areas outside his mandate, for the field of ijtihād itself can be subdivided. If he is appointed over matters of inheritance, he is not required to know more than the laws of succession, wills, and what pertains to them; and if he is entrusted with marriage contracts and their annulment, his knowledge need extend only to that. Accordingly, if the ruler says, ‘Adjudicate in what you know,’ just as he might say, ‘Issue fatwas in what you know,’ this is permissible. What the judge does not know is simply outside his jurisdiction, just as we say concerning a Muslim judge who rules over non-Muslims or the two arbiters appointed for compensation when game is killed in the sanctuary …” End quote.

Today the Ministry of Justice has put in place regulations that govern judges in their jurisdictions and precisely define their powers. It is therefore obligatory to consult and abide by these regulations, for they bring order to affairs and delineate authority. Since they conflict with neither a verse of Allah’s Book nor a hadith of His Messenger, acting in accordance with them is mandatory.