Sulh: A Shariah-Compliant Dispute Avoidance Practice for the Construction Industry

Abstract

Shariah is not just an Islamic law but also a moral code to guide man in enjoining good and abstaining from evil, which includes the actions of mitigating and resolving conflicts in society. Sulh is a form of peacekeeping mechanism laid down by the shariah, and in the Quran, Sulh is regarded as a form of conciliation and “the best form of settlement”. Traditionally, Sulh has been employed as a dispute resolution method in societies, from marital dispute to contractual disagreement. While many confined the spectrum on Sulh only in the area of dispute resolution, research on how Sulh could be employed as a dispute avoidance procedure is yet to be found, although, essentially it has been practiced as such by the Prophet and his companions. With regard to the construction industry, the dispute has caused multi-billion Ringgit of losses. While there are acceptable methods to avoid dispute from conventional perspective in the industry, dispute avoidance from the perspective of shariah has not been addressed. This paper aims to examine how Sulh could be employed as a procedure to avoid dispute. This study adopts qualitative methods where the secondary data are collected from books, journals, reports and statutes to review the practices of dispute avoidance in the construction industry, as well as in shariah. Moving on, the content analysis is adopted to analyse on how Sulh fits in the construction industry as a dispute avoidance practice by comparing the key criteria with the conventional dispute avoidance mechanisms. The finding shows that Sulh shares many similarities with the conventional dispute avoidance; thus, supporting the notion that dispute avoidance is not absolutely absent in shariah, which provides for a possibility to be applied in the construction industry.