Matin research journal
Year:2017 | Volume:19 | Issue:74 |Papers Count:8

Inheritance is one of the most important legal foundations in any society and it has always been under certain rules and regulations in different legal systems. These rules and regulations have been chiefly shaped up according to the conditions, time and the living place of the human beings. As a matter of fact, upon a change in the living conditions, these rules and regulations must also go under change to let the society embrace rules proportionate to its time. Therefore, the rules and regulations on inheritance have gone under drastic changes and passed behind stages of evolution in the course of time and place among the past generations and civilizations. The inheritance laws in the Arabian Peninsula has been no exception to this, i.e. they have been enacted and developed based on the rules and principles governing the entire peninsula. With the advent of Islam in that land, the rules and regulations on inheritance experienced great developments. In this paper, we have tried to review the views of jurists and Imamiyah theoreticians at law, as well as Imam Khomeini’s views on inheritance. While presenting a precise definition of the word inheritance, we have tried to clarify the rules and fundamentals serving as the basis for inheritance laws.

A sale contract will be valid only when the vendor and the buyer are given the power to give the possession of the object of obligation to each other in right time and place. The issue of the term of authority or power to deliver comprises of two other minor issues: the authority to deliver, and knowledge of the parties on this authority. Therefore, if the two parties have the knowledge on the power while signing the contract, but find out after conclusion of the contract that there was no authority and they have made a mistake, the contract shall be deemed null and void. This is because one of the two requirements, i.e. power to deliver, is absent and such a contract will be a deceptive deal. Due to unknown state of the deal or the wrong conceptions of the two parties when signing the contract, a deceptive deal can cause conflict between the parties. Moreover, concluding a contract with prior knowledge on lack of authority for delivery will be an unreasonable transaction.The cases covered in this research work are the following: fundamentals of the requisite for power to deliver object of transaction, deception and ignorance that make a contract null and void, and “is deception absolutely enough for nullity of a contract or it is negligible in some cases?” Are the real authority on delivery and the knowledge of the parties on this authority required – so that the absence of either would nullify the contract – or knowledge of the parties on power to deliver is not the requisite for validity of the contract?

The “principle of no harm” is one of the most important and widely used jurisdictional terms that, given its origin, has long been used by the revered Shia and Sunni jurists. However, the way it has been used and the inclusiveness of this principle are two areas of discord among the jurists. Imam Khomeini has reviewed this prophetic principle in quite an innovative way with a different approach to find a different connotation for this narration, according to which, the principle of no harm embraces all material and immaterial damages. Moreover, it is an indication of the initial rule along with other preliminary rules and in no contradiction with any rule except the rule on principle of monarchy.This understanding is in perfect accord with the expressions of the jurists on the abuse of rights in civil liability that has been largely covered in discussions on civil liability and confines the scope of fulfilling the rights.

In Islamic jurisprudence and the pertinent laws, evidence (two fair witnesses) is considered as one of the valid statements for substantiating a claim and a verdict. In view of the jurists, evidence is recognized as a presumption validated by the legislator. Generally, the jurists and the theoreticians at law (followers of the obstruction theory and non-obstruction theory) consider presumption as a proof in view of making an acceptable conjecture, but at the same time, the majority of these experts validate evidence – that is applicable to presumption – not only in view of conjecture, but also in view of validation by legislator. They have brought the resulting conjecture (due to validation by legislator) in par with such terms as religious knowledge, common law, knowledge of certain religious issues, knowledge of interpretation, etc. However, some believe in causality and instrumentality of evidence and while accepting the absolute instrumentality of presumption, consider evidence as a proof of verdict even if the presumption is not strongly reliable. In addition to this group, some other jurists like Imam Khomeini, constitute the basis of evidence on confession by rational witnesses that has received validation and ratified by legislator. Therefore, it is the indicative nature of evidence or its instrumentality that makes it valid as a proof. The difference between the two schools of thought has laid its impact on setting requisites for validity of the evidence, its impacts and its rules such as in: obligation or no obligation for judge to make a verdict after the testimony of witnesses, validity of the number of witnesses, and the possibility or impossibility of realization of conflict of evidence. The findings of this paper support the views on instrumentality of evidence. In addition to those believing in instrumentality of evidence, those supporting causality have also claimed its applicability in such issues as successive validity, conflict of the two evidences, fairness and majority in number of the witnesses, etc.

Legal addresses theory is one of the most important scientific and fundamental innovations by Imam Khomeini which is enriched with many scientific values and points and has immensely affected the jurisprudential and theological discussions. According to this theory, legal addresses, irrespective of personal qualities and capacities such as inability and power, shall be practiced by all bearing responsibility and it is not considered independent with the diversity of the addresses per the number of those in charge. This theory precisely counters the generally accepted views of renowned jurists and theoreticians of religious law such as Sheikh Ansari, Ayatollah Nayini, and Ayatollah Khoyi in inclusion of the preconditions for undertaking the religious duty such as wisdom and power, and in independence of the religious rules per the number of all under religious duty. In this paper, we have conducted a comparative study of the two theories and came to the conclusion that the legal addresses theory is fundamentally secure, possessing very strong bases for reasoning. Therefore, Imam Khomeini’s views on no independence for religious rules, is thus supported and the alleged faults with it are rejected.

Liberation of man from the shackles of structure, principles, and the values of hegemonic international system has become a factor for introducing revised views in international relations, all of which in common tend to make a change in the status quo and to lay the foundation for a new and desirable international system.The critical international relations theory emphasizes on such factors as freedom and rationality, and pursues a critical approach to traditional empiricism and absolute scientism. In the meantime, this school of thought criticizes political status quo, and tries to pave the ground for the realization of liberation in world politics and ethical life in the international system for the states. Following the victory of the Islamic Revolution in Iran under Imam Khomeini, a wide range of discussions on critical approach toward international order and system was presented.This paper follows a descriptive-analytical approach along with documentary study to make a comparative analysis of the concept of liberation in view of Imam Khomeini and the critical international relations theory. In addition to presenting solutions for realization of liberation in international system, we will cover in this work the differences and similarities between the two approaches.

Social justice is the main philosophy behind the holy mission of the Divine prophets and the utmost goal of a religious government. It is also one of the major principles in Imam Khomeini’s political school of thought. In view of Imam Khomeini, social justice, elimination of social gaps and economic inequality, as well as supporting the poor and underprivileged walks of life must be duly paid attention in all government programs by all legislative, executive and judiciary forces. Thus he introduced a well-balanced approach in connection with distributive justice in economic field by strictly observing the principle of social equity and rejecting any form of discrimination and injustice. Resorting to linguistic analysis of discourse, this paper reviews the issue of social justice in the speeches of Imam Khomeini, published in Sahifeh Imam (An Anthology of Imam Khomeini’s speeches, messages, interviews, decrees, religious permissions, and letters). The main question in this paper is the following: What linguistic solutions have been applied in Imam Khomeini’s speeches to support the social justice discourse? To provide appropriate response to this question, we have used discourse analysis based on van Leeuwen's Social Semantic Approach and applied sociological and semantic components such as rejection and attraction that include such areas as determining the role, determining the type of reference and determining the nature of the discourse.The findings show that in Imam Khomeini’s words, linguistic elements for determining the type of reference and determining the type of the nature of discourse have the highest frequency. Also, from the components of rejection and attraction, the latter has the highest frequency. Moreover, the most typical denotation in human representation is the element of association.