Understanding Sharia: Islamic Law in a Globalized World (By Raficq S. Abdulla and Mohamed M. Keshavjee)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Understanding Sharia: Islamic Law in a Globalized World by Raficq S. Abdulla and Mohamed M. Keshavjee Ali Hassan Zaidi (bio) Understanding book: Islamic Law in a Globalized World Raficq S. Abdulla and Mohamed M. Keshavjee London-New York: I.B. Tauris, in association with The Institute of Ismaili Studies, 2018. xxx + 321 Pages. Every religious community that centers around a foundational text or scripture must struggle with the task of interpreting what it believes to be a timeless, universal message in the context of a time-bound and space-bound life. Teasing out the specific applications from the general moral principles is no easy task, of course, particularly when the nature and pace of social change is as drastic as it has been in the last two centuries. The task is made even more challenging in the Islamic case when the Qur'an is regarded as the inerrant word of God, and the hermeneutic endeavor is marginalized in favour of literalist readings and political slogans such as "back to the Qur'an," with the simplistic belief that the Qur'an is simply a blueprint or manual that needs to be followed step-by-step. Understanding Sharia by Abdulla and Keshavjee offers both an introduction to the sharia as a set of guiding Islamic moral principles and a plea to recognize the flexibility and malleability of the jurisprudential application (fiqh) in the 21st century of those principles, as enunciated in the Qur'an, the Prophetic Sunna, and in the case of the Shia tradition, through the authority of the Imams. These foundational sources are of course complemented by pronouncements in the hadith literature, although the authors do regard the hadith to be at a subordinate level and indeed appear to be skeptical about the [End Page 80] authenticity of the majority of the hadith corpus. As if to answer the charge by Orientalists and contemporary neo-conservatives that the immutability of the law is the core of Islam, Abdulla and Keshavjee take great lengths to demonstrate how Islamic legal practice developed, and at times diverged from legal theory, through the centuries by generations of legal scholars who sought to apply the moral principles in a pragmatic fashion when confronted with new situations and the complexity of everyday-life under new social conditions and geographies. For instance, they argue that the appropriation of 'urf (customary laws), which did not always square with sharia principles, by Maliki muftis in the Maghreb, illustrates the pragmatic, contextual, evolutionary and flexible development of Islamic jurisprudential practice. The argument is well made and well known. Indeed, this book does not set out to raise new questions, as the authors themselves mention (p. xxx). Rather, its aim is to cover material that is relevant to a general audience in accessible language, an audience which may not have been exposed to the historical development of sharia and has encountered it only recently, especially through news headline coverage of corporal punishments and patriarchal or bigoted judgments imposed on vulnerable women or religious minorities in Muslimmajority contexts. Unlike specialized treatments which restrict themselves to discussions of law in either Sunni or Shia Islam in a particular period of time, this book has the merit of breadth: in the case of the authors (the former Sunni, the latter Shi`i), it discusses both Sunni legal reasoning, especially as it developed after Imam Shafi`i, and Shia conceptions of the authority of the Imams to interpret law, particularly 11thcentury CE Fatimid jurisprudence. Nevertheless, except for Chapter 7 on "Shi`i Legal Understanding and Theory of Law," the focus of most of the book is on trends and currents in Sunni Islam. Yet, breadth at the expense of depth can also become a bit problematic, and at times this does appear to be the case as I note below. The book can easily be read as though it comprises two halves. The first three chapters set the scene by discussing the social conditions of 7th century Arabia just prior to and at the time of the Qur'anic revelation, legal practice under the Ummayads, and the development and consolidation of law under the Abbasids. Chapters 4 and 5 mark...