The method
How Mizan decides what it knows.
The method is the project. It governs what may be claimed, how firmly, and on what terms it may be discussed. Four parts hold it together: the hudud principle, the three-category framework, the mizan standard, and an open model of vetting.
The governing principle
Freedom within the limits.الحدود
A horse tethered to a tree grazes the whole circle its rope allows, yet cannot cross the bound. The rope is not a cage. It is what keeps the pasture safe.
The divine limits are the tree and the rope. Inside them lies a wide field of legitimate reason, and inside that field Mizan argues freely, weighs evidence, and changes its mind. Outside the limits there is nothing lawful to reach for. The modern error is to cut the rope and call the result liberty.
This is why the method is not a single flat register of opinion. Some ground is fixed by the limits themselves. Some is settled by a precedent that has already been tested. And a wide field remains genuinely open. The three-category framework is how that distinction is made visible on every page.
The three-category framework
Every claim carries its standing where it is made.
Each claim is classified and tagged in plain sight, where it is made, so the epistemic status is legible before you read a word of the argument. The tag is not decoration. It sets the terms on which the claim may be discussed.
The Fixed
الثابتSettled by decisive text. The channel here is correction and verification, not debate.
The Time-tested
سابقة راشدةGrounded in Rashidun precedent. The open question is transferability, argued with references.
The Open Field
اجتهادOpen to reasoned disagreement. Anyone may argue the case, with name, credentials, and email.
In Books Two and Three one ground is named in place of a category number, and it is not a fourth category. Settled in the four schools means the Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi'i and Hanbali schools concur, each from its relied-upon position, and the claim belongs to the settled trunk, not the open field. Where fewer than four schools were opened, Book Three says “the schools opened” and claims no more.
The standard
The mizan: one instrument, applied to each system.الميزان
Mizan means the balance, and it is the project's recurring instrument. Every system is weighed against a standard proper to it, and that standard is derived from the sources, the Qur'an, the Sunnah, and the practice of the Rightly-Guided Caliphate, not invented to fit a conclusion. Where secular analysis independently reaches the same demand, that is corroboration, never the ground.
The standard is concrete, not a slogan, and it takes the specific shape each domain requires. For the economic system it is the classical law of lawful taking, restated from the jurists' own books in twelve rules under three headings, that wealth be taken by right, given in right, and withheld from falsehood, conjunctive for the ordinary levy and applied case by case, which is worked out rule by rule on that domain's own page.
The vetting model
The screening law, and then the open scrutiny.
One rule governs the gate before anything reaches you. No claim reaches the public that has not been verified and has not survived an independent adversary. That discipline is tiered by track: a book is fully audited, a distilled essay is spot-checked against its vetted source, and nothing downstream may introduce a claim the books have not already cleared.
Provenance
Every hadith, verse, scholarly position, and statistic traces to a verified source, and is marked confirmed, broken, or unverifiable. Nothing broken is published, and nothing is invented to patch a gap.
Adversary
Before release, an independent reviewer tries to kill the piece. Only an argument that survives a hostile read reaches you. Bluntness is earned by rigor, not offered in place of it.
Open scholarly vetting
Publication is not the end of scrutiny. Scholars endorse or correct in the open, with references. Where a correction is sound, the work is revised and the correction is credited in the changelog.
Publication does not close the matter. Scholars endorse a piece or correct it, in the open, on a model borrowed from code review. A correction carries references and is weighed by the credentials of the one who makes it. Fixed and precedent claims invite correction and verification, not debate; open claims invite argument. Where a correction is sound, the work is revised and the correction is credited by name in a public changelog. The people who can make this real are named on the coalition page.
The lifecycle
From a draft to a paper.
A piece of work moves through five stages. The maturation gate between publication and maturity is computed, not voted. It is not a count of endorsements. Eligibility requires the internal gates, category-matched verified endorsements, no open correction, and a stability window with the clock reset by any new substantive correction. Only the owner sets a piece to matured or to paper.
Draft
Written and assembled inside the pipeline. Original claims enter only here, never through a blog or a thread. Not public.
In review
Under the internal gates: the provenance audit, an independent hostile review, and the voice pass. Not public.
Published
Live on the site, tagged by category, open to endorsement and correction. Held loosely from the first day, and revised where a correction is sound.
Matured
Cleared the maturation gate. The internal gates passed, the fixed and precedent claims carry category-matched verified endorsements, no correction stands open, and the work has held stable for a set window. A quiet seal, never a trophy.
Paper
Graduated to the formal record: submitted to peer review and the scholarly literature, and carrying a reference and a DOI once accepted.