Authority and Plurality in Muslim Legal Traditions: The Case of Ismaili Law†

Abstract

Abstract Thoughtful commentators on Islamic law often point out that Islamic law exhibits great interpretational diversity. Typically, this plurality is evidenced by the range of opinions or articulations of the rule in the face of any question or issue. At the level of sources, accounts of Islamic law have often emphasized the reliance on a set of major sources or roots of law, with other lesser sources. Scholarly works have acknowledged that matters are more complex than this and that different Muslim traditions may employ a different range of sources. Nonetheless, source plurality, and in particular how this source plurality is expressed in minority traditions, is underexplored. Focusing on the case of contemporary Nizari Ismaili law this Article will help to demonstrate the expression of source plurality in Islamic law. In so doing, this discussion aims to enrich the understanding of plurality in Islamic law to include not only the plurality of answers or rules on different issues but also the plurality of sources.