الملخص الإنجليزي
Traffic accidents are contemporary events that result in numerous damages including the loss of human life. The continuous increase in these accidents has caught my interest in the topic and motivated me to study it from an Islamic legal (fiqhi) and judicial perspective.
This study aims at lifting the veil from the aspect of compensation following the damages induced by car accidents.
The thesis consists of an introduction, then an introductory chapter followed by two study chapters and a conclusion.
The introduction explains the problem and importance of the study, the reasons for my choice of this topic, previous studies on the problem, as well as the study's methodology and plan.
The introductory chapter clarifies the intended meanings, such as "road" and "traffic accident" in Islamic law (fiqh) and jurisprudence. It further establishes the Islamic legal foundation of the topic of road accidents, thereby arriving at the legitimacy of compensation (ta'widh) and liability (tadhmin) for injuries resulting from road accidents under allusion to the Islamic legal evidences.
The first chapter states the different types of damages arising from traffic accidents, explaining the concept of damage from the Islamic legal (fiqhi) as well as judicial perspective under comparison between both. It then arrives at the definition of damage (dharar) as "harm inflicted on any other party absolutely".
This chapter mentions the different types of damage and the guidelines to their consideration in Islamic law and the different types of damage and the conditions for their compensation in judicial thought. It became clear to me that damage is divided into material and non-material damage. The first designates damage incurred to the body or wealth, the second designates damage incurred to interests other than wealth. The later is referred to as non-material damage ("dharar adabi", "dharar ma'nawi").
The second chapter treats the case of financial guarantee or compensation in terms of explaining the concept first linguistically, then from the perspective of Islamic law and judicially. It then goes on to explain physical injuries and the amounts of compensation in Islamic law as compared to the legal texts. These are referred to with the technical term "al-Uroosh" in Islamic law, meaning the stipulated financial amounts liable to be paid for damages that are not specified. Their specification is then carried out by the "Government of Justice" (hukumat al-"adl). It became clear to me that the specific amount of the diyah (blood money) in Islamic law has been assessed by the Lawgiver starting from a toe nail to scalp hair, ranging from slapping to homicide, where the full diyah is to be paid for homicide and what comes under the same rule in meanings and senses. The full diyah is also liable for injuries of organs present in pairs if this is vital for their usage, or the completeness of beauty, as well as what comes in quadruples such as the edges of the eye lids, and what is present in tens, such as the fingers of the hands, and injuries and different organs of the body.
The "Arsh" is compulsory for fractures and injuries whose compensation have been specified by the Lawgiver. As to those which have not been specified by the Lawgiver, these are to be specified by the "Government of Justice".
The second chapter also mentions the general foundations of compensation in the Law and their judicial application in cases of compensation; in as far as the guidelines specified by the Law for assessing compensation have been arrived at. In the following, the chapter explains judicial applications in cases of compensation in traffic accidents in the Sultanate of Oman.
At the end of chapter two, the permissibility of compensation for non-material damage is explained. It is clarified that the technical term "non-material damage" is an innovation, with divergent contemporary fiqhi views between the permissibility and non-permissibility of material compensation. Judicial thought treats this issue in outspoken texts in civil law determining the permissibility of financial compensation for non-material damage.
The conclusion states the most important results and conclusions the researcher arrived at in his thesis. Our last supplication is that Al Praise is due to Allah, the Lord of the
Worlds.
