Law And Tradition In Classical Islamic Thought

Bringing together essays on topics related to Islamic law, this book is composed of articles by prominent legal scholars and historians of Islam. They exemplify a critical development in the field of Islamic Studies: the proliferation of methodological approaches that employ a broad variety of sources to analyze social and political developments.

Recent events in the Islamic world have brought to our attention the formidable potency of the classical Islamic tradition. Debates over reform, revival, and change in the Islamic world, whether of a political, religious, or economic nature, revolve around an engagement with Islamic history, thought, and tradition. This book examines such debates by exploring modern texts, groups, and figures that stake out some sort of claim to pre-modern traditions in disciplines as diverse as Islamic law, Qur'anic exegesis, politics, literature, and jihad. It challenges the tendency to locate modern scholars and groups in the Islamic world on an ideal spectrum running in a linear way from 'modernism' to 'Islamism.' It provides new insights into the complex religious landscape of the Islamic world, drawing attention to important scholars and intellectuals, some of whom have received little or no attention in western scholarship. It provides an examination of how the classical Islamic heritage functions in today's Islamic world in regions as diverse as the Middle East, Iran, and the Indian subcontinent. In its scope and coverage, this book transcends an increasing tendency towards bifurcation between classical and contemporary Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies.

This is an important and prestigious volume showcasing leading progressive Islamic thinkers. It includes new essay by controversial public intellectual and Muslim scholar Tariq Ramadan. It offers strong appeal to policymakers and as well as students and scholars of religion and the Middle East.How are Muslims to reconcile their beliefs with the pressures and imperatives of the modern world? How should they handle the tension between their roles as private citizens and their religious affiliations and identities? This groundbreaking volume shows in what ways prominent Muslim intellectuals have themselves attempted to bridge the gap by recasting traditional Islamic notions in the light of contemporary understandings of equality, justice and pluralism. The contributors to the book examine the tradition that they seek to reform in relation to the human rights ethic of the modern world. The new wave of Islamic thinking which they represent emerges as multi-stranded rather than defined by a single trend or doctrine.Themes covered include a deconstruction of patriarchal interpretations of the Qur'an; the distinctions between universal and context-specific parts of Islamic texts; a re-contextualisation of Shari'a law; and a critique of religious jurisprudence, particularly where this impacts on matters of sex and gender. Old texts are re-interpreted through the lived situations of real people today. The result is an indispensable portrayal of progressive Islamic thought in the twenty-first century, which will be an invaluable resource for students and scholars of religion, ethics and Middle East studies.

How does Islamic law respond to social changes? This has been one of the challenging questions in Islamic legal history. Muslim legal theorists have been debating this since the formative period of the Islamic legal thought. The sources of Islamic law are limited in certain scriptural texts, historical legal precedents and supplementary legal sources. Yet, human challenges and problems are unlimited. So, how do limited numbers of divine texts and prophetic traditions provide viable solutions for ever-increasing problems of the Muslim community in this modern digital world? This book explores the intriguing relationship between social and legal changes in Islamic law. Modern technological and digital revolutions have brought about unprecedented social changes in all walks of human life. Classical Muslim jurists devised the doctrines of the general philosophy of Islamic law to relate Islamic law to changing social realities of their historical contexts. Classical legal theorists created many legal principles, theories and concepts to demonstrate the flexible and adaptable nature of Islamic law to different social conditions. Yet, classical Islamic legal thoughts are not always viable and applicable to modern social conditions. For this reason, many modern Muslim scholars argue that the legal reform is very much important today to meet the challenges of modern time. Muslim scholars seek solutions for the problems of the Muslim community in the historical precedents of past the Muslim intellectual heritage without appreciating all these modern changes. Many of them are experts on Islamic studies and yet, they find it difficult to relate what they learn to the modern social condition of this complicated world. The science of the general philosophy of Islamic law provides some dynamic mechanisms to relate Islamic teaching to modern social conditions without distorting or twisting the pure teaching of the divine message. It bridges the gap between the historical legacies of the Islamic past and the scientific development of the modern world. It relates the past legacy of Islamic heritage with the present-day realities of the modern world. It directs Muslim jurists to understand modern social conditions in a holistic approach considering both the literal and contextual meaning of the text. Therefore, many others argue that the science of the legal philosophy of Islamic law can be developed as a dynamic research methodology and developmental policy strategy. This book explores the classical and modern ideas of the general philosophy of Islamic law to understand the dynamic nature of Islamic law to adapt to the modern social conditions. This book emphasises the importance of understanding texts, context and social realities. When we apply the divine texts into modern context we should time and space factors. Moreover, the social realities of modern societies otherwise, the application of divine texts will not be always viable in this modern world. The literal school of Islamic legal thought does not take these factors into consideration when they try to apply the divine texts to modern conditions. The challenges of modernity are immense in all field of human sciences. We see a lot of changes in politics, geopolitics, finance, business sections and many other fields of education and human sciences. It is expected that the digital technology and artificial intelligence will bring dramatic changes into human life by 2040. The Muslim world must make some legal changes to meet the challenges of the social changes. The basic argument of this book is that some aspects of classical legal thoughts are viable today in our modern context and legal changes are unavoidable. The book explores different areas of modern development in human sciences to highlight the importance of legal changes in accordance with social changes and it explores the adaptable nature of Islamic law to all places and in ages without distorting the essence.

These studies by Wael Hallaq represent an important contribution to our understanding of the neglected field of medieval Islamic law and legal thought. Spanning the period from the 8th to the 16th centuries, they draw upon a wide range of original sources to offer both fresh interpretations of those sources and a careful evaluation of contemporary scholarship. The first articles expound the interrelated issues of legal reasoning, legal logic and the epistemology of the law. There follows a set of primarily historical studies, which question a series of widely held assumptions, while the last items explore issues of legal theory and methodology. One particular topic concerns the role of Shafi'i as the ’master architect’ of Islamic legal theory, and Professor Hallaq would finally argue that this image is in fact false and a creation of later centuries.

This ebook is a selective guide designed to help scholars and students of Islamic studies find reliable sources of information by directing them to the best available scholarly materials in whatever form or format they appear from books, chapters, and journal articles to online archives, electronic data sets, and blogs. Written by a leading international authority on the subject, the ebook provides bibliographic information supported by direct recommendations about which sources to consult and editorial commentary to make it clear how the cited sources are interrelated related. A reader will discover, for instance, the most reliable introductions and overviews to the topic, and the most important publications on various areas of scholarly interest within this topic. In Islamic studies, as in other disciplines, researchers at all levels are drowning in potentially useful scholarly information, and this guide has been created as a tool for cutting through that material to find the exact source you need. This ebook is a static version of an article from Oxford Bibliographies Online: Islamic Studies, a dynamic, continuously updated, online resource designed to provide authoritative guidance through scholarship and other materials relevant to the study of the Islamic religion and Muslim cultures. Oxford Bibliographies Online covers most subject disciplines within the social science and humanities, for more information visit www.aboutobo.com.

This pioneering study examines the process of reasoning in Islamic law. Some of the key questions addressed here include whether sacred law operates differently from secular law, why laws change or stay the same and how different cultural and historical settings impact the development of legal rulings. In order to explore these questions, the author examines the decisions of thirty jurists from the largest legal tradition in Islam: the Hanafi school of law. He traces their rulings on the question of women and communal prayer across a very broad period of time - from the eighth to the eighteenth century - to demonstrate how jurists interpreted the law and reconciled their decisions with the scripture and the sayings of the Prophet. The result is a fascinating overview of how Islamic law has evolved and the thinking behind individual rulings.

The Canonization of Islamic Law tells the story of the birth of classical Islamic law in the eighth and ninth centuries CE. It shows how an oral normative tradition embedded in communal practice was transformed into a systematic legal science defined by hermeneutic analysis of a clearly demarcated scriptural canon. This transformation was inaugurated by the innovative legal theory of Muhammad b. Idrīs al-Shāfi'ī (d. 820 CE), and it took place against the background of a crisis of identity and religious authority in ninth-century Egypt. By tracing the formulation, reception, interpretation and spread of al-Shāfi'ī's ideas, the author demonstrates how the canonization of scripture that lay at the heart of al-Shāfi'ī's theory formed the basis for the emergence of legal hermeneutics, the formation of the Sunni schools of law, and the creation of a shared methodological basis in Muslim thought.