Sedd al-Zarāʾiʿ and Future-Sensitive Normativity in Mālikī Legal Thought

This paper examines the Mālikī doctrine of sedd al-zarāʾiʿ  as a model of future-sensitive normativity in Islamic law. Under this principle, an action that is permissible in itself may be prohibited if it foreseeably leads to morally impermissible outcomes. While acknowledged across Sunni schools, Mālikī jurists systematically develop it as a coherent, ethically grounded method that integrates probabilistic reasoning, proportionality, and social welfare considerations. By foregrounding potential consequences, sedd al-zarāʾiʿ demonstrates a historically informed anticipatory approach to moral and legal regulation, offering an alternative to abstract equality or procedural rule-following. The paper situates this principle within contemporary debates on anticipatory ethics, risk governance, and the moral imagination of the future, highlighting its relevance to questions of bioethics, digital governance, and emerging technologies. Ultimately, the study shows that classical fiqh contains conceptual resources for ethically navigating uncertainty and preemptively mitigating harm, providing insights for both historical understanding and modern moral reasoning.