Awad Abd Allah Abu Bakr

Awad Abd Allah Abu Bakr is an Islamic legal scholar and academic who served as an assistant professor at the Faculty of Sharia, best known for his comparative treatise Nizam al-Ithbat fi al-Fiqh al-Islami ("The System of Evidence in Islamic Jurisprudence") Majallat al-Jami'a al-Isl…+1.

Academic Work and Jurisprudential Contributions

Abu Bakr's scholarly work focuses on Islamic procedural law, judicial proof, and comparative jurisprudence, published in serial installments in the Journal of the Islamic University of Medina (مجلة الجامعة الإسلامية بالمدينة المنورة) Majallat al-Jami'a al-Isl…+1. In Nizam al-Ithbat fi al-Fiqh al-Islami, he examines the principles of judicial evidence in Islamic law alongside modern statutory systems Nizam al-Ithbat fi al-Fiq…+1. He emphasizes that Islamic jurisprudence maintains a balance between enumerating admissible forms of proof—as held by the majority of classical jurists—and preserving judicial discretion, thereby preventing arbitrary rulings without reducing the judge's function to a purely mechanical application Majallat al-Jami'a al-Isl…+1.

Abu Bakr categorizes the instruments of judicial evidence in Islamic law into universally accepted proofs and disputed means, attributing the disagreements among legal schools to differing thresholds of evidentiary strength and juristic precaution against doubtful grounds Nizam al-Ithbat fi al-Fiq…. His comparative analysis contrasts civil and criminal evidentiary standards, observing that modern civil statutes limit certain proofs such as oral testimony for specific financial thresholds, whereas Islamic law maintains broader admissibility anchored in ethical and moral presumption, without imposing absolute restrictions Nizam al-Ithbat fi al-Fiq…. In criminal proceedings, he links statutory freedom of judicial conviction to the juristic stance of Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyyah, who rejected strictly restricting probative mechanisms Nizam al-Ithbat fi al-Fiq….

Abu Bakr also devoted extensive studies within his work to specific evidentiary mechanisms, including documentary and written evidence (al-ithbat bi-al-kitabah) Nizam al-Ithbat fi al-Fiq…+1, intuitive discernment (al-firasah) Nizam al-Ithbat fi al-Fiq…, and circumstantial evidence (al-qara'in), underscoring that circumstantial indicators can reach conclusive certainty while cautioning against overreliance that could compromise legal rights Nizam al-Ithbat fi al-Fiq…+1.