Sadd Adh-Dhara'i - Blocking the Mean to an End Means

The term 'means to an end mean' refers to any action (the means) carried out for the sole purpose of achieving something else (an end mean). Common sense will tell you to prevent or prohibit an action (mean) if it will lead to harm (mafsadah). In Islam, this common sense is called Sadd Adh-Dhara'i.

Sadd Adh-Dhara'i, literally mean 'blocking the means' or closing the door against possibility of committing a sin or harm. Sometimes, a permissible act may be forbidden by the Syaria Law, because it leads to an end mean that are sinful or harmful.

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)
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. Islam prohibits fornication because it will leads to confusion in paternity, wide spread of prostitution and sexual diseases.

Islamic Syariah is based on circumspection, adopting discretion and being on guard against what might lead to harm. It is common sense to prevent someone to take a path that might result in hurting themselves or others. Islam prohibit its believers to insult the beliefs or deities of the non-Muslims because in turn they will do the same to Islam and Allah SWT ignorantly.

But we must bear in mind that both the mean and the end means are two different things. The mean by itself is harmless but due to the fact that they might lead to an end mean that would cause harm, it's prohibited. If the harm of the end mean is eliminated, the mean by itself is permissible.

Another instances is when preventing a mean that would caused a bigger harm than the harm of the end mean, the mean will also be permitted. This is common sense, let's say drinking alcohol is forbidden because it causes intoxication but in the case of choking, a person is allowed to drink it to save their life.

In Islam, when someone are in a state of emergency (darurat) or in-need (hajiyyat), matters that might lead to another harmful end means (sadd adh-dhara'i) becomes permissible. Or when the Islamic scholars have differences in opinion (khilaf) in a religious matter, the prohibition of the mean becomes permissible.

This is where lots of people got confused. They thought both, the mean and the end means are the same. For example, Muslims are forbidden to touch the skin of the opposite gender. Some Muslims would take this so literally till the extent of refusing aid or help to a lady in distress because they are afraid of skin contact.

Or a friendly shake of hand between genders in front of hundreds or thousands of audiences where the possibility of fornication is nil to never, the prohibition is ease. Sometimes, the harm and humiliation for tarnishing the good name of Islam and its reputation caused by the cursing and taunting by the ignorant Muslims are even greater that the act of the original mean itself.



Wallahu'alam