Shari'a politics, ʿulamā and Laity Ijtihād: fields of normativity and conviviality

Abstract

Contentiously debated shari’a (Islamic law) across the world has acquired specific political connotations. In India, this is so not only because the overbearing presence of fixity of maslaki-taqlīdi shari’a produce inverted truth that petrifies the true meaning, but also due to the deep entanglement of the legal with extra-legal phenomenon such as communalism, producing palpable theoretical–practical tensions. Employing the concepts of normativity and conviviality, the essay examines the normativity of dominant maslaki-taqlīdi shari’a-based Muslim Personal Law. Such a law aims at producing a conforming Muslim legal subject. On the other hand, this shari’a is rendered a contested terrain critically contesting the authority of the legal monotheism of codified taqlīdi shari’a by everyday laity ijtihād that constitutes the field of conviviality. Such conviviality is characterized by the laity’s everyday idea of justice and democracy marked by a deep sense of defiance propelled by adverse and undesirable conditions of existence in everyday locations, viz., the Social. Thus, the field of conviviality is marked by a movement from normative subject to ontological self, enabling women/subjects to exercise their subjectivity to decode the occultated and petrified meanings of taqlīdi shari’a convivially. This signifies a movement towards making the canonized shari’a/law as an everyday social practice.