As for freedom, a slave is not qualified to hold offices of authority, nor is he fully qualified to give testimony.

As for Islam, a sinful Muslim may not hold such office, so an unbeliever is even less entitled to do so. As for uprightness, a sinful person is suspect with regard to his religion, whereas judicial office is founded upon trustworthiness.

As for sound hearing and sight, these are required so that he may distinguish the claimant from the one who denies the claim; this is not possible for a blind or deaf person. As for the soundness of the remaining limbs, this is not considered, since he is still capable of issuing judgments. This differs from the supreme imamate, in which the loss of certain limbs is disqualifying, because rights cannot be fully enforced in their absence, in the manner we mentioned earlier.

As for knowledge, he must be knowledgeable of the rulings of the Sharīʿa. Acquiring this knowledge depends upon knowing four fundamentals:

First: knowledge of the rulings contained in Allah’s Book, including the abrogating and the abrogated, the clear and the ambiguous, the general and the specific, and the concise and the elucidated.

Second: knowledge of the established Sunnah of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, consisting of his actions and sayings; of the ways in which it has been transmitted, whether through mutawātir or non-mutawātir reports; of what is sound and what is unsound; and of reports connected to a specific cause or stated without restriction.

Third: knowledge of the statements of the early Muslims concerning matters on which they reached consensus and matters over which they differed, so that he may follow the consensus and exercise his own judgment where there is disagreement.

Fourth: knowledge of analogy by which cases not addressed in the texts are referred back to foundational cases expressly stated in the revelation and agreed upon by consensus.