including Kecia Ali, Khaled Abou El Fadl, and Sherman Jackson, encourage contemporary Muslims to engage the juridical legacies of traditional Islam. (21) Young American Muslims in the DIP [Deen Intensive Program] community already claim this commitment to fiqh, as they see it linking them to authentic sites of knowledge in the ummah. However, compared with academic scholars like Ali, most scholars and students in the DIP community are hesitant to challenge "the assumptions and [time] constraints" of classical fiqh. (22) At the same time, however, because they are located at the America-ummah borders, DIP students are increasingly urged to reconsider majority fiqh rulings, given their contemporary American social context. Dr. Umar is among the leaders making this challenge, and his training in the classical Islamic sciences allows him to present this undertaking in a context that honors traditional Islamic epistemologies."In modern days, we have questions that we didn't have before. Learn the tradition," he told us, "but don't stay there. Go on. Move. You have to be up to date. Is our tradition compatible with where we are going?" Dr. Umar encouraged us to make our tradition culturally relevant to contemporary life, emphasizing how Muslim jurists have always regarded 'urf (cultural custom) when deriving fiqh. Contemporary fuqaha' (Muslim jurists) must "understand the [legal] judgments of the imams, early and late, in the cultural context in which they lived. These judgments cannot be [seen as] set in stone. If the imams were living today, they would give different judgments."
-Jamillah Karim, American Muslim Women: Negotiating Race, Class, and Gender Within the Ummah, p. 146
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