Prof. Abou El Fadl on The Modern Dynamics and the Islamic Legal Tradition, part 1
Contemporary Islamic debates often sound like a hadith-hurling competition. Opponents search for Prophetic traditions, or other anecdotal reports, which are then disembodied from any historical context or dynamic. These reports are used to wage a form of rhetorical combat over a presumed Islamic authenticity. But this authenticity is no more than an idealized and puritanical vision of either resistance or emulation of Western mores. Of course, the vision of Western mores that informs this process, like the Islamic vision, is not based in history or social context. Both the adopted Western vision, whether pro or con, and the Islamic vision are equally ahistorical and acontextual.
Although this book attempts to anchor the contemporary juristic discourses in the pre-modern heuristic tradition, I fear that the epistemology and methodology of that tradition is now dead and cannot be recovered. The pre-modern juristic tradition, like the Common law system, was always "a work in progress." The search for God's law was an act of worship that could never come to an end. This, in part, is why Islamic law exhibited such a remarkable degree of diversity and continued to resist codification despite the existence of strong centralized states in different periods of Islamic history. Muslim jurists never ruled directly, and so the Divine law remained protected from the vagaries of political shifts and social currents. Rather, Muslim jurists played an influential mediating role between the masses and the state - for both the ruled and ruled they performed a negotiative function. They restrained the excesses of the government against the masses. At times, they even led rebellions against despotic rulers, not to overthrow them, but to impress upon them the necessity of moderation and balance. [10] As the guardians of God's law, the jurists maintained the Shari'ah as an amorphous concept, an ideal construct, and a grundnorm that binds the ruler and ruled. But it does not do so simply through the institutions because it is too enormous and important to be encapsulated by a particular human institution. To essentialize or summarize the Shari'ah in order to fit it within a human institution was considered a corruption - a degradation and spoilation of God's mercy that allows for diversity exist. Consequently, the progress and implementations of Islamic law had an incremental and dialectical quality.
And God Knows the Soldiers: The Authoritative and Authoritarian in Islamic Discourses
, pg. 108-109
If the shariah and interpretations were always a work-in-progress then how can "the epistemology and methodology of that tradition is now dead and cannot be recovered."?
ReplyDeleteIt can be re-implemented though that wide, generous and beneficial road isn't entirely cleared.
You might even say there is no other choice. All the other religious traditions are very partial and corrupted, and the scientific foundation of Western epistemology crumbled in the 20th century, as illustrated by Wittgenstein's Ladder and Rene Magritte’s painting “Chateau des Pyrenees” (though the latter has multiple meanings).
But his point is well taken: "Muslim jurists played an influential mediating role between the masses and the state - for both the ruled and ruled they performed a negotiative function." Islam's history of freedom in thought and religion is important.
Thanks Rich.
ReplyDeleteI think Abou El Fadel's lament is primarily about the death? or 'suffocation' of deep Islamic scholarship in the modern world especially in the context of political movements that transformed its breadth into very narrow positions and ideologies.
I think he makes a really interesting point about whether what is desirable is to simply sort of 'cut and paste' or transplant that pre-modern legacy - he says, no, a 'synthesis' is what is desirable - see part 4 - http://ebaadenews.blogspot.com/2010/11/prof-abou-el-fadl-on-modern-dynamics_9724.html
But is "the epistemology and methodology of that tradition is now dead and cannot be recovered."?
ReplyDeleteI didn't make the jump to being a student of knowledge, but my impression from Hamza Yusuf translations of several talks on usul and so forth by Sh Abdallah bin Bayyah was that the tradition is alive.
That's not to say that political leaders or bureaucracies are on board, or even a majority in the mosques (even the Western propaganda organs don't get that wrong). I guess I'm still not getting the Professor.
Yea, I agree, I think that part of the quote is problematic.
ReplyDelete