Right (haqq)

الحق

Haqq means, in Arabic usage, what is established, owed or certain, the opposite of falsehood. In the jurists' terms it has two senses: a judgement that matches reality, and a duty established by the law. It falls into the right of God and the right of the servant. ¹ Ibn al-Qayyim: God's right admits no compromise, as in the hudud, zakat and expiations, while the servant's right admits settlement, waiver and exchange. ¹ Usulis disagreed whether the right is the divine address itself or the act it binds. ^{2 3} Al-Qarafi divides obligations into God's alone, the servant's alone, and the mixed case of slander. ² Ibn Rajab lists five kinds of the servant's right. ³ Jurists also use the word for financial and non-financial entitlements, for contractual obligations, for state stipends and for easements. ⁴ The source of every right is God, and the holder, the obliged party and the object of the right are its pillars; the object must be lawful. ^{5 6} The jurists divide rights into God's pure right, the servant's pure right, and mixed rights. The servant's pure right is one whose benefit belongs to a specific person, such as debt and blood-money. ⁷ In a mixed right one side prevails: slander (qadhf) is mainly God's right, so penalties merge, the penalty is not inherited, pardon does not cancel it, and the imam executes it. ⁷ Retaliation for killing (qisas) is mainly the servant's right, so the victim's heirs may sue or not, pardon, or settle. ⁸ The Malikis divide the servant's right into three: owed by God to him, owed in general, and owed by one servant to another. ⁸ Al-Zarkashi sets the order when rights collide: God's rights such as prayer, zakat, fasting and pilgrimage come first, human rights come first in compulsion and concessions, and in zakat against a debt the sounder view gives God's right priority. ^{9 10} God's rights cannot be waived by people, no one may contrive to drop acts of worship, and no settlement may be made over pure hudud. ^{11 12} The servant's right may be waived by one who is competent to dispose and whose object is waivable; waiver covers objects, debts, usufructs and unrestricted rights, and the schools disagree on taking an exchange for a right. ^{13 14 15 16} Al-Shatibi divides rights by whether their purpose is intelligible: worship is God's pure right and admits no partner. ^{16 17} Acts of custom touch God's right through the universal ordering and the servant's right in the afterlife and worldly benefit. ¹⁸ Rights divide by definition into fixed, unfixed and disputed; fixed rights (the five prayers, the zakat amounts, prices) bind the liability once their cause exists and do not lapse by silence or time, while unfixed rights (charity, spending on relatives) bind only after being fixed by agreement, settlement or a judge. ¹⁹ The maintenance of a wife is disputed: the majority hold it binding on the liability, the Hanafis only once the ruler fixes it. ²⁰ Fixing varies with the holder, the obliged person, the object, the amount, the place, the time, the direction and the number. ^{20 21} Rights are either complete or lightened by a lawful excuse. ²¹ By inheritance, rights are inherited, passed by succession without inheritance, or not transferred at all, as with offices, agency and the choice among wives. ^{21 22 23} Jurists disagree on inheriting the option of stipulation, choice, defect and acceptance, and on usufructs; the Hanafis and the Hanbalis deny inheritance of the stipulated option, the Malikis and Shafiis allow it, and retaliation accrues to the victim's heirs by succession, not inheritance. ^{23 24 25} By financial value, rights fall into four kinds; by religious and judicial standing they are binding in conscience, binding before a court, or binding in both. ^{25 26} The right of ownership and the permitted right are bare rights with no fixed object. ²⁶ Rights of acquisition are graded: the bare permitted right or right of acquisition, which has no specific object; the fixed or binding right, a right to acquire a specific thing by the holder's will once a cause of ownership exists; and the established right, which settles on a particular thing even before ownership. ^{27 28} The fixed right differs from the bare one in that it attaches to a specific thing and its holder can raise it to ownership by acceptance alone. ^{28 29} In spoils of war the established right becomes firm when the spoils are secured inside Muslim territory; it is then compensable on destruction, inheritable on the holder's death before division, and may not be sold before division. ^{29 30} The established right resembles ownership in that it is compensable on destruction and inheritable by consensus, but it differs in that it cannot be sold or disposed of. ^{31 32} Rights divide by how they are enforced: those that must go to a court (penalties and marriage-related rights), those that need no court (taking a specific object, a wife's or children's maintenance), and those disputed (collecting debts). ³² The headword closes at the next entry, hiqqa (حُقّة). The headword closes at the next entry, hiqqa, p.7214.