This class of rulings embraces such acts as returning the greeting of peace and saying, “May God have mercy on you,” to one who sneezes—matters the jurists usually consign to the closing sections of their works, the chapters they call “Miscellany.”
We, too, have deemed it fitting—God Most High willing—to mention the well-known items that belong to this category. Before that, however, you should realize that the purpose of the practical, prescribed Sunnahs is to cultivate inner moral virtues.
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Some of them foster reverence for those who must be revered and gratitude toward those who must be thanked; worship falls under this heading, and these are the honorific Sunnahs.
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Others promote the virtue called chastity, and these divide into two branches:
• the Sunnahs related to food and drink, and
• the Sunnahs related to marriage. -
A further group seeks the establishment of justice and the prevention of wrongdoing. These include the Sunnahs that secure justice in property and those that secure justice with respect to bodies; within this class fall retaliation (qiṣāṣ), warfare, and penal sanctions, for all of them are instituted solely to realize justice.
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Another set comprises the Sunnahs that guard people’s honor, together with those that regulate wealth in all its forms and its valuation. Their aim is to pursue the virtue called generosity and to shun the vice called stinginess. Zakāh enters this chapter from one angle and the chapter on communal sharing of wealth from another, and the same applies to voluntary alms.
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There are also Sunnahs concerned with social organization, indispensable to human life and to the preservation of man’s practical and intellectual virtues; this is what is termed leadership (riyāsa), hence the need for Sunnahs governing rulers and those charged with upholding the religion.
Among the most important Sunnahs in communal life are those that regulate love, aversion, and cooperative effort in upholding these ordinances—that is, “forbidding wrong and enjoining right.” This is the religious love and hate that arise either from neglect of these Sunnahs or from defective belief concerning the Sharīʿah.
Most of what jurists record in the miscellaneous sections of their books consists of points that do not fit neatly under the four cardinal virtues—chastity, justice, courage, and generosity—or under worship, which functions as a condition for establishing those virtues.
The Book of Judgments is now complete, and with its completion the entire compendium is finished. Infinite praise is due to God for that, as He alone deserves.