Shariʿa and State in the Modern Muslim Middle East

Abstract

The Islamic shariʿa is central to Islam in the minds of most Muslims and non-Muslim scholars. In many ways, the centrality of the Islamic shariʿa has increased in recent decades. Yet despite—or perhaps because of—this centrality, the precise, even the general, role of the shariʿa in Islamic societies is the subject of contentious debate among Muslims. Outside of and underlying such debates are more subtle and rarely articulated differences about the meaning of the Islamic shariʿa. In this essay, I will put forward a general intellectual map for those varying meanings. More critically, I will suggest that important shifts in the meaning of the Islamic shariʿa have taken place in the Muslim world, and that these shifts are closely connected to the nature and viability of legal and educational institutions associated with the Islamic shariʿa in the past. As the Islamic shariʿa has become disconnected from these institutions, its meaning has changed in some fundamental ways. Most important, the shariʿa is approached less for its process than for its content. And because the shift in institutions and understanding has received much less attention from Muslims, widespread attempts to re-create older relationships (particularly involving the relationship between the Islamic shariʿa and the state) in fact involve a deepening rather than a counteracting of the transformation in the Islamic shariʿa.

Secular-Islamist Cleavage, Values, and Support for Democracy and Shari’a in the Arab World

“…The polarization between the colonial powers and the locals in the Muslim world led to a false impression that Islam is a religion hostile to modern institutions (Ayoob 2007;Filali-Ansary 2003). One dimension of this polarization was most imminently seen in the codification of the Western-style code replacing the shari'a law (Brown 1997;Feldman 2008;Hefner 2011).…”

“…Early implementations of modern code did not create fierce opposition as it left the shari'a-based institutions untouched (Brown 1997), but they paved the way for a future clash.…”

Monitoring and Medicalising Male Sexuality in Semi‐Colonial Egypt

“…2 At the onset of the First World War in 1914, the British placed Egypt under a temporary protectorate, ending all remaining official ties with the Ottoman empire. As a result, Egyptians continued to maintain and oversee many of their indigenous institutions such as the Islamic courts whose jurisdiction had been limited mostly to issues of religious endowments and personal status (marriage, divorce, child custody and inheritance) over the course of the nineteenth century.…”

Klassieke sharia en vernieuwing

“…Het primaat van de juristen (Coulson 1964;Millot 1957;Schacht 1964) bestaat nog steeds (Badr 1978;Hill 1978;Zweigert and Kötz 1996), ofschoon men zou kunnen betogen dat er meer sprake is van historische verhandelingen dan van juridische (Brown 1997;Mayer 1987). Een nieuwe ontwikkeling in het onderzoek naar de sharia is die van de rechtsantropologie, die met name sinds de koloniale tijd opgang doet.…”

“…De rechterlijke macht is in de meeste moslimlanden ingericht naar westers (vooral Frans en Angelsaksisch) model. Er bestaat derhalve de neiging om de als nationale wet gecodificeerde sharia op een legalistische wijze te benaderen (Botiveau 1993;Brown 1997). Anders dan in de rechtspraktijk tot in de negentiende eeuw, waarin rechters op het gebied van de sharia regelmatig advies inriepen van ulama en muftis, geniet de moderne rechtbank onafhankelijkheid in haar interpretatie van de sharia.…”