This book offers a new way of understanding classical Islamic theories, holding that divine revelation is necessary for the knowledge of norms and its reading of the issue of reason breaks new ground in Islamic theology, law and ethics. It will appeal to students and scholars of Islamic studies, Islamic ethics, law and post-colonial theory.
In this book, Omar Farahat presents a new way of understanding the work of classical Islamic theologians and legal theorists who maintained that divine revelation is necessary for the knowledge of the norms and values of human actions. Through a reconstruction of classical Ashʿarī-Muʿtazilī debates on the nature and implications of divine speech, Farahat argues that the Ashʿarī attachment to revelation was not a purely traditionalist position. Rather, it was a rational philosophical commitment emerging from debates in epistemology and theology. He further argues that the particularity of this model makes its distinctive features helpful for contemporary scholars who defend a form of divine command theory. Farahat's volume thus constitutes a new reading of the issue of reason and revelation in Islam and breaks new ground in Islamic theology, law and ethics.
This series of critical reflections on the evolution and major themes of pre-modern Muslim theology begins with the revelation of the Koran, and extends to the beginnings of modernity in the eighteenth century. The significance of Islamic theology reflects the immense importance of Islam in the history of monotheism, to which it has brought a unique approach and style, and a range of solutions which are of abiding interest. Devoting especial attention to questions of rationality, scriptural fidelity, and the construction of 'orthodoxy', this volume introduces key Muslim theories of revelation, creation, ethics, scriptural interpretation, law, mysticism, and eschatology. Throughout the treatment is firmly set in the historical, social and political context in which Islam's distinctive understanding of God evolved. Despite its importance, Islamic theology has been neglected in recent scholarship, and this book provides a unique, scholarly but accessible introduction.
This handbook is a detailed reference source comprising original articles covering the origins, history, theory and practice of Islamic law. The handbook starts out by dealing with the question of what type of law is Islamic law and includes a critical analysis of the pedagogical approaches to studying and analysing Islamic law as a discipline. The handbook covers a broad range of issues, including the role of ethics in Islamic jurisprudence, the mechanics and processes of interpretation, the purposes and objectives of Islamic law, constitutional law and secularism, gender, bioethics, Muslim minorities in the West, jihad and terrorism. Previous publications on this topic have approached Islamic law from a variety of disciplinary and pedagogical perspectives. One of the original features of this handbook is that it treats Islamic law as a legal discipline by taking into account the historical functions and processes of legal cultures and the patterns of legal thought. With contributions from a selection of highly regarded and leading scholars in this field, the Routledge Handbook of Islamic Law is an essential resource for students and scholars who are interested in the field of Islamic Law.
A comprehensive guide to Islamic legal scholarship, this Handbook offers a direct and accessible introduction to Islamic law and the academic debates within the field. Topics include textual sources and authority, institutions, substantive legal areas, Islamic legal philosophy, and Islamic law in the Muslim World and in Muslim minority countries.
Barren Women is the first scholarly book to explore the ramifications of being infertile in the medieval Arab-Islamic world. Through an examination of legal texts, medical treatises, and works of religious preaching, Sara Verskin illuminates how attitudes toward mixed-gender interactions; legal theories pertaining to marriage, divorce, and inheritance; and scientific theories of reproduction contoured the intellectual and social landscape infertile women had to navigate. In so doing, she highlights underappreciated vulnerabilities and opportunities for women’s autonomy within the system of Islamic family law, and explores the diverse marketplace of medical ideas in the medieval world and the perceived connection between women’s health practices and religious heterodoxy. Featuring copious translations of primary sources and minimal theoretical jargon, Barren Women provides a multidimensional perspective on the experience of infertility, while also enhancing our understanding of institutions and modes of thought which played significant roles in shaping women’s lives more broadly. This monograph has been awarded the annual BRAIS – De Gruyter Prize in the Study of Islam and the Muslim World.
Does Islamic law define Islamic ethics? Or is the law a branch of a broader ethical system? Or is it but one of several independent moral discourses, Islamic and otherwise, competing for Muslims’ allegiance? The essays in this book present a range of answers: some take fiqh as the defining framework for ethics, others insert the law into a broader ethical system, and others present it as just one among several parallel Islamic ethical discourses, or show how Islamic ethics might coexist with non-Muslim normative systems. Their answers have far reaching implications for epistemology, for the authority of jurists and lay Muslims, for the practical moral challenges of daily life, and for relationships with non-Muslims. The book presents Muslim ethicists with a strategic contemporary choice: should they pursue a single overarching methodology for judging all ethical questions, or should they relish the rhetorical and political competition of alternative but not necessarily incompatible moral discourses?
In a richly narrated historical study, Youcef Soufi excavates an Islamic legal culture of critique from the 10th to 13th centuries. Focusing on the practice of munā.zara (disputation), Soufi explores how and why oral debates became a pervasive and revered part of the intellectual legal landscape of Iraq and Persia. Using the life and career of celebrated Iraqi jurist Abū Is.hāq al-Shīrāzī, he traces the formalization of debate gatherings at the dawn of the classical legal schools (al-madhāhib) in the early 10th century and analyzes the wider institutional, social, and discursive conditions that made debate an important feature of any jurist's practice. Pushing back against claims that classical Muslim jurists sought to weed out differences of opinion, The Rise of Critical Islam presents a community committed to the openness, fluidity, and continued exploration of the law. Challenging the view of debate gatherings simply as mechanisms of doctrinal resolution before codification, the study reveals a classical culture where critical debates were part of a continual and personal quest to discover God's law. In uncovering this classical legal culture, Soufi invites readers to question claims about the promise of secular critique in disciplining religious passions and forging human solidarity.
A focus on the way in which Muslim scholars of the Hanafite school of Muslim law, from the 10th-12th centuries, adapted their legal norms to changing circumstances and distinguished between legal and ethical norms, religious and legal status, legal propositions and religious judgment. The introduction links this debate to the sociology of law and spells out the distinction between theology and law in Islam.
