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WA'D, God will not take you to task for oaths which you may have…
WA'D
DEFINITION
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A commitment made by one person to another to undertake a certain actual or verbal disposal beneficial to the second party or a verbal preposition made by someone to undertake something to the benefit of another person.
A promise which connotes an expression of commitment given by a promisor to another party to carry out specified actions in the future.
LEGALITY OF WA'D
Muslim jurists have unanimously agreed that when a person promises something without any intention of fulfilling his promise, such an act is not permissible because the promisor will be deemed to be a liar and a pretentious person who is seriously condemned by religion.
If the same promisor takes an oath to convince the promisee to act upon his promise, the promisor in the latter case will not only be subject to Allah's condemnation but also a fine/compensation (kaffarah) to relieve him from his false oath.
The majority (the Hanafi, the Shafi'i, the Hanbali and some from the Maliki) opine that a promise made by a person to the other is religiously binding (mulzim diyanatan) but not legally binding (mulzim qada'an). Therefore, the court has no power to enforce the promise because the promisee only has a moral right.
Imam Malik and some of his followers have a dissenting views. They hold that the promise is legally binding though without any commitment from the other side.
When exercising ijtihad in permitting the application of wa'd, contemporary jurists observed it as a necessity for the interest of the contracting parties. According to them, wa'd should not be rigidly construed in its limited application.
Instead, wa'd can be an innovative tool in structuring many forward contracts which require flexibility with the full commitment of the parties involved without jeopardising the basic principles and maqasid al-Shariah.
It is an unanimously accepted principle that fulfilling a promise is a must for ethical and religious reasons. An absolute promise which is not subject to a particular reason and neither affects to a loss to the other party, is not legally binding.
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God will not take you to task for oaths which you may have uttered without thought, but will take you to task [only] for what your hearts have conceived [in earnest]: for God is much-forgiving, forebearing (Qur'an, 2:255)
Eg: if the person says that 'I will travel to such place for such time; therefore do lend me a horse.' Once the horse has been lent to him, he must travel.
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