Qiyas

Allah commands you to seek knowledge

“My Lord, increase me in knowledge” (Surah Ta-Ha 20:114). DeenUp turns that command into a daily habit — a swipeable feed of bite-sized, scholar-approved Islamic lessons, quick quizzes, and daily streaks.

Download DeenUp on the App Store

What is Qiyas?

Qiyas comes from the Arabic root q-y-s, meaning "to measure," "to compare," or "to gauge one thing against another." In Islamic legal theory, it denotes analogical reasoning: the process of extending an established ruling from a case explicitly addressed in the Qur'an or Sunnah to a new case that shares the same effective underlying cause ('illah). Qiyas is counted as the fourth classical source of Islamic law, following the Qur'an, the Sunnah, and ijma (consensus).

The method follows a structured four-part process: jurists start with the original case (asl) that already has a clear ruling, identify the far' or new case in question, determine the 'illah — the specific reason or attribute that justified the original ruling — and then confirm that this same 'illah is present in the new case before applying the same legal ruling to it. This structure is designed to keep qiyas disciplined and text-anchored, distinguishing it from unrestrained personal opinion.

All four Sunni madhabs — Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi'i, and Hanbali — accept qiyas as a legitimate source of law, a point on which they broadly agree, though they differ in emphasis and caution. The Hanafi school is often noted for applying qiyas relatively liberally, sometimes even preferring it over a weak, solitary hadith in certain contexts, while the Hanbali school tends to apply qiyas more conservatively, leaning more heavily on textual evidence and earlier precedent before resorting to analogy.

A frequently cited example illustrates the method well: the Qur'an explicitly prohibits khamr, historically understood as date or grape wine, on account of its intoxicating effect. Jurists used qiyas to extend this same prohibition to other intoxicating substances unknown at the time of revelation — including beer, spirits, and other substances that share the identical effective cause of intoxication — even though these were never named in the original text.

Qiyas plays an essential role in allowing Islamic law to address new and evolving circumstances that the primary texts do not explicitly mention, from modern financial instruments to new technologies and medical procedures, while still remaining firmly rooted in the values and reasoning embedded in revelation.

Examples of Qiyas

• Extending the ban on wine to other intoxicants: Since the effective cause of prohibiting khamr is intoxication, qiyas extends the same ruling to beer, spirits, and other intoxicating substances.
• Currency and Riba rules: Jurists apply qiyas to extend riba al-fadl rules on gold and silver to modern paper currency, since both function as a medium of exchange and store of value.
• New forms of contracts: Scholars use qiyas to evaluate modern financial contracts by comparing their structure to classical sale, lease, or partnership contracts already addressed in fiqh.
• Cleaning agents and impurity removal: Jurists extend rulings on purifying an object with water to other effective cleaning agents that achieve the same purifying result.

References in Qur'an & Hadith

"So take a lesson, O you who have vision." — Surah Al-Hashr 59:2

When the Prophet ﷺ sent Mu'adh ibn Jabal to Yemen, he asked how he would judge matters. Mu'adh said he would refer to the Qur'an, then the Sunnah, then exercise his own reasoning, and the Prophet ﷺ approved of this. — Sunan Abi Dawud 3592