Sadd Adh-Dhara'i

Usul Fiqh - Sadd Adh-Dhara'i

Sadd Adh-Dhara'i, literally mean 'blocking the means' or closing the door against possibility of committing a sin or illegal things. Sometimes, a permissible act may be forbidden by the syaria law, because it leads or may lead to a sin or illegal actions. For example, because adultery is unlawful, therefore, looking at the aurat of a unrelated woman is also unlawful because it is likely to lead to adultery.

Scholars of Fiqh uses this methodology to put a stop to an acts which are originally mubah or mustahabb, because fearing the act will lead to innovated, harmful matters or impermissible ends. A person may intend evil by a permitted action, like someone who makes a reduction in the pricing of his sale in order to injure a trader or killed of his competitor. This is an act made haram using the Sadd Adh-Dhara'i methodology.


So the principle of blocking means does not only involve intentions and personal aims as you see, but also what it intends of general benefit or averting general harm or mafsadah. Mafsadah or mudhorat means causing harm to the general public interest. In another word, if something good(or an act) leads to evil, it is forbidden because the good became evil by intention.

Sadd Adh-Dhara'i are divided into 2 categories:

1) Action or words leading to evil, like drinking the intoxicant which leads to intoxication, slander which leads to lying, and fornication which leads to confusion in paternity are words and deeds which lead to evils, and they clearly are nothing else. What leads definitely to harm, like digging a well next to the door of a house in the dark so that one who enters the house must fall into it, and the like.

2) Evil intention: Something permitted which it is intended as a means to an evil, like someone who contracts a marriage by which he intends to make a woman lawful to a previous husband or concludes a sale intending usury. Or someone who curses the deities of the idolaters in their presence(QS 6:108).

Ash-Shatibi said in this topic:

"The Shari'a is based on circumspection and adopting discretion and being on guard against what might lead to harm." (al-Muwafaqat, pt. 2, p. 253)

Fahaman Sadd Adh Dhara'i dalam Mazhab Shafii:
http://www.academia.edu/5078580/Pemikiran_Imam_Al-Syafii_mengenai_Sadd_Al-Dharai_sebagai_Sumber_Hukum

Wallahu'alam