Shari’a in the Modern Era

Abstract

Iyad Zahalka’s commendable Shari’a in the Modern Era: Muslim MinoritiesJurisprudence gives researchers and legal practitioners an overview of theemerging fiqh al-aqalliyyāt (the jurisprudence of minorities) discipline. Infact, at the time of its publication several other books were published on thissubject, among them Uriya Shavit’s Shari’a and Muslim Minorities: TheWasati and Salafi Approaches to Fiqh al-Aqalliyyāt al-Muslima (Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, 2015) and Said Fares Hassan’s Fiqh al-Aqalliyyāt: History,Development, and Progress (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).114 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 34:1Zahalka credits Shavit with giving him useful comments while preparingShari’ah in the Modern Era.It is no coincidence that all of these books are from a Sunni perspectivewith particular focus on the works of two well-known scholars in the Sunnilegal world: Yusuf al-Qaradawi and Taha Jabir al-Alwani (d. 2016). Zahalka’sbook, therefore, captures the gradual creation of another – or perhaps a new– branch of fiqh that focuses on the socio-legal issues faced by Muslims ruledby non-Muslim sovereigns or systems that conflict with Islamic law. His objectiveis to examine the “fiqh al-aqalliyyāt of the wasaṭi faction, a school ofthought dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood that positions itself in the middleground between conservative resistance to changing religious laws andthe disintegration of the commitment to religious tradition” (p. 4). The author ...