Musa/A Critical Edition, 4. The Development of al-Qawāʿid al-Fiqhiyyah

Modern scholarship is divided on the question of whether al-qawāʿid al-fiqhiyyah might legitimately be used to arrive at legal rulings for unprecedented incidents, and those on both sides of the debate agree that the general rules proffered by most qawāʿid are predominantly, rather than universally, valid; this means that although al-qawāʿid are supposed to be universal, there are individual cases which are exceptions to the rules provided by particular qawāʿid—a factor that, according to those opposed to applying qawāʿid to new precedents, affects the authoritative quality of al-qawāʿid al-fiqhiyyah.