MAṢLAḤAH is the Arabic term for the Islamic concept of public interest or general welfare of the community of Muslims. Consideration for the public interest (istiṣlāḥ) is held by Muslim legal scholars to be ancillary to the four canonical sources of Islamic law, namely the Qurʾān; the sunnah, or normative behavior of the Prophet; ijmāʿ, or the historical consensus of the community; and qiyās, analogical extension of accepted law or judgment. Although these sources are meant to provide guidelines for all eventualities, there have always been instances that seem to require abandoning either the specific ordinances of the Qurʾān and sunnah or the results of analogical reasoning, because of the overriding nature of the public interest.

In positive or applied law, considerations of maṣlaḥah in social and economic...