The determination of the universality or historicity of the norms related to hadd and qisas punishments in the Quran

The issue of the universality or historicity of the jurisprudential rulings in the Holy Quran constitutes one of the most crucial areas of debate in the field of Islamic law today. Although the method of historical-criticism was developed in the West and applied to Islamic sources for the first time by orientalists, this issue has been discussed in Islamic sciences under different names and methods since very early periods in history (e.g. causation, qiyas, istihsan, istislah, etc.). In our thesis, by using the research methods of historical science, namely source scanning/research, criticism, classification, analysis and description, the reason for the formation of the historical-criticism method in the West, its process, the stages of its application on the Bible, the criticisms directed against it and the way it is applied to Islamic sources are shown. Subsequently, the three main approaches to universality and historicity in the history of Islamic thought are introduced together with their arguments. These are briefly described as follows: The view that sees the legal provisions in the Holy Quran as universal in their entirety, the view that evaluates them as historical in their entirety, and finally the view that considers the Quran to contain both universal and historical provisions and thus proposes a method to distinguish them from each other. In this thesis, the results of the application of each of these approaches to hadd and qisas punishments in the Holy Quran are determined. In conclusion, according to the universalist approach the hadd and qisas punishments in the Quran are universal, according to the second approach the relevant provisions are historical, and according to the third approach the relevant rulings are generally universal. The thesis criticizes some of the contradictions and dilemmas of the first two views, which advocate the universality or historicity of jurisprudential rulings in their entirety, and states that the last method is a method that can be applied not only on the Quranic provisions related to criminal law, but also in other fields of law to obtain appropriate results.