Pub Date : 2020-04-15DOI: 10.1163/15685195-00260a16
I. Alatas
This article examines a little-known treatise on the commemoration of ʿĀshūrāʾ (the martyrdom of al-Ḥusayn, the grandson of the Prophet Muḥammad) written by a scholar from the Ḥaḍramawt, ʿAbdallāh b. ʿUmar Bin Yaḥyā (d. 1265/1849). Entitled Risāla fī ibṭāl bidaʿ munkarāt (Treatise on Nullifying Reprehensible Innovations), the text was composed in response to the ʿĀshūrāʾ commemorative processions introduced by South Asian Muslims in early nineteenth century Malay-Indonesian Archipelago and witnessed by the author during his travel there (1832-1835). In this treatise, Ibn Yaḥyā de fines a lawful, regulated, and emotionally restrained way of commemorating al-Ḥusayn’s martyrdom while stressing the imperative of ʿAlid leadership of the umma. I then discuss the recent resurfacing of a redacted summary of the Risāla in Indonesia. I show that in the context of an increasingly intense Sunni-Shiʿi sectarian contestation that characterized contemporary Indonesia, the redacted version of this ʿAlid treatise circulates as an anti-Shiʿi text.
{"title":"From ʿAlid Treatise to anti-Shiʿi Text: the Riṣāla fī ibṭāl bidaʿ munkarāt of ʿAbdallāh b. ʿUmar Bin Yaḥyā (d. 1265/1849) and its Afterlife in Indonesia","authors":"I. Alatas","doi":"10.1163/15685195-00260a16","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15685195-00260a16","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000This article examines a little-known treatise on the commemoration of ʿĀshūrāʾ (the martyrdom of al-Ḥusayn, the grandson of the Prophet Muḥammad) written by a scholar from the Ḥaḍramawt, ʿAbdallāh b. ʿUmar Bin Yaḥyā (d. 1265/1849). Entitled Risāla fī ibṭāl bidaʿ munkarāt (Treatise on Nullifying Reprehensible Innovations), the text was composed in response to the ʿĀshūrāʾ commemorative processions introduced by South Asian Muslims in early nineteenth century Malay-Indonesian Archipelago and witnessed by the author during his travel there (1832-1835). In this treatise, Ibn Yaḥyā de fines a lawful, regulated, and emotionally restrained way of commemorating al-Ḥusayn’s martyrdom while stressing the imperative of ʿAlid leadership of the umma. I then discuss the recent resurfacing of a redacted summary of the Risāla in Indonesia. I show that in the context of an increasingly intense Sunni-Shiʿi sectarian contestation that characterized contemporary Indonesia, the redacted version of this ʿAlid treatise circulates as an anti-Shiʿi text.","PeriodicalId":55965,"journal":{"name":"Islamic Law and Society","volume":"27 1","pages":"411-438"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2020-04-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41323444","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-03-02DOI: 10.1163/15685195-02712p07
Eve Krakowski
{"title":"Maimonides and the Merchants: Jewish Law and Society in the Medieval Islamic World, written by Mark Cohen, 2017","authors":"Eve Krakowski","doi":"10.1163/15685195-02712p07","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15685195-02712p07","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":55965,"journal":{"name":"Islamic Law and Society","volume":"27 1","pages":"138-141"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2020-03-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/15685195-02712p07","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49299625","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-02-20DOI: 10.1163/15685195-02712p01
Aaron Rock-Singer
{"title":"Islam and Politics: From the Margins to the Center","authors":"Aaron Rock-Singer","doi":"10.1163/15685195-02712p01","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15685195-02712p01","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":55965,"journal":{"name":"Islamic Law and Society","volume":"27 1","pages":"1-4"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2020-02-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/15685195-02712p01","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43554688","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-02-20DOI: 10.1163/15685195-02712p05
Amira Mittermaier
Whereas some Muslim-majority countries have centralized alms economies, in others Islamic charity unfolds informally. In Egypt, pious giving occurs on the margins of the state but lies at the heart of society. Egyptians’ daily charitable practices may therefore be read as political in the broad sense proposed by Hannah Arendt: efforts by ordinary citizens to shape the conditions of their collective existence. Although this Arendtian framework helps scholars to think about politics beyond the parameters of the state, even such widened notions of the political are not consistent with how pious givers in Egypt understand their practices. While attending to the poor, pious givers often orient themselves away from the social and material, foregrounding the beyond, paradise and God. Even though the “beyond” is intimately connected to the “here and now,” this decentering of the social poses a provocative challenge to the secular observer’s search for the political.
{"title":"Islamic Charity as (Non)Political in Contemporary Egypt","authors":"Amira Mittermaier","doi":"10.1163/15685195-02712p05","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15685195-02712p05","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Whereas some Muslim-majority countries have centralized alms economies, in others Islamic charity unfolds informally. In Egypt, pious giving occurs on the margins of the state but lies at the heart of society. Egyptians’ daily charitable practices may therefore be read as political in the broad sense proposed by Hannah Arendt: efforts by ordinary citizens to shape the conditions of their collective existence. Although this Arendtian framework helps scholars to think about politics beyond the parameters of the state, even such widened notions of the political are not consistent with how pious givers in Egypt understand their practices. While attending to the poor, pious givers often orient themselves away from the social and material, foregrounding the beyond, paradise and God. Even though the “beyond” is intimately connected to the “here and now,” this decentering of the social poses a provocative challenge to the secular observer’s search for the political.","PeriodicalId":55965,"journal":{"name":"Islamic Law and Society","volume":"27 1","pages":"111-131"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2020-02-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/15685195-02712p05","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43201302","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-02-20DOI: 10.1163/15685195-02712p06
F. Khan
{"title":"Governing Islam: Law, Empire, and Secularism in South Asia, written by Julia Stephens, 2018","authors":"F. Khan","doi":"10.1163/15685195-02712p06","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15685195-02712p06","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":55965,"journal":{"name":"Islamic Law and Society","volume":"27 1","pages":"133-137"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2020-02-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/15685195-02712p06","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41320580","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-02-20DOI: 10.1163/15685195-00260A07
Lev E. Weitz
This article examines the interaction of Coptic Christians with Islamic legal institutions in provincial Egypt on the basis of a corpus of 193 Arabic legal documents, as well as relevant Coptic ones, dating to the 2nd-5th/8th-11th centuries. I argue that around the 3rd/9th century Islamic Egypt’s Christian subjects began to make routine use of Islamic legal institutions to organize their economic affairs, including especially inheritance and related matters internal to Christian families. They did so in preference to the Christian authorities and Coptic deeds that had been their standard resource in the first two centuries of Muslim rule. The changing character of the Egyptian judiciary encouraged this shift in practice, as qāḍīs who adhered to fiqh procedural rules increasingly filled judicial roles formerly held by administrative officials. By eschewing and nudging into disuse a previously vital Coptic legal tradition, Christian provincials participated in the Islamization of ʿAbbāsid and Fāṭimid Egypt.
{"title":"Islamic Law on the Provincial Margins: Christian Patrons and Muslim Notaries in Upper Egypt, 2nd-5th/8th-11th Centuries","authors":"Lev E. Weitz","doi":"10.1163/15685195-00260A07","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15685195-00260A07","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article examines the interaction of Coptic Christians with Islamic legal institutions in provincial Egypt on the basis of a corpus of 193 Arabic legal documents, as well as relevant Coptic ones, dating to the 2nd-5th/8th-11th centuries. I argue that around the 3rd/9th century Islamic Egypt’s Christian subjects began to make routine use of Islamic legal institutions to organize their economic affairs, including especially inheritance and related matters internal to Christian families. They did so in preference to the Christian authorities and Coptic deeds that had been their standard resource in the first two centuries of Muslim rule. The changing character of the Egyptian judiciary encouraged this shift in practice, as qāḍīs who adhered to fiqh procedural rules increasingly filled judicial roles formerly held by administrative officials. By eschewing and nudging into disuse a previously vital Coptic legal tradition, Christian provincials participated in the Islamization of ʿAbbāsid and Fāṭimid Egypt.","PeriodicalId":55965,"journal":{"name":"Islamic Law and Society","volume":"27 1","pages":"5-52"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2020-02-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/15685195-00260A07","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49236472","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-02-20DOI: 10.1163/15685195-00260a06
Aaron Rock-Singer
Salafism is a global religious movement whose male participants often distinguish themselves from their co-religionists by a particular style of facial hair. Historians have focused largely on this movement’s engagement with questions of theology and politics, while anthropologists have assumed that Salafi practice reflects a longer Islamic tradition. In this article, I move beyond both approaches by tracing the gradual formation of a distinctly Salafi beard in the 20th century Middle East. Drawing on Salafi scholarly compendia, leading journals, popular pamphlets, and daily newspapers produced primarily in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, I argue that Salafi elites revived a longer Islamic legal tradition in order to distinguish their flock from secular nationalist projects of communal identity and Islamic activists alike. In doing so, I cast light on Salafism’s interpretative approach, the dynamics that define its development as a social movement, and the broader significance of visual markers in modern projects of Islamic piety.
{"title":"Leading with a Fist: A History of the Salafi Beard in the 20th-Century Middle East","authors":"Aaron Rock-Singer","doi":"10.1163/15685195-00260a06","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15685195-00260a06","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Salafism is a global religious movement whose male participants often distinguish themselves from their co-religionists by a particular style of facial hair. Historians have focused largely on this movement’s engagement with questions of theology and politics, while anthropologists have assumed that Salafi practice reflects a longer Islamic tradition. In this article, I move beyond both approaches by tracing the gradual formation of a distinctly Salafi beard in the 20th century Middle East. Drawing on Salafi scholarly compendia, leading journals, popular pamphlets, and daily newspapers produced primarily in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, I argue that Salafi elites revived a longer Islamic legal tradition in order to distinguish their flock from secular nationalist projects of communal identity and Islamic activists alike. In doing so, I cast light on Salafism’s interpretative approach, the dynamics that define its development as a social movement, and the broader significance of visual markers in modern projects of Islamic piety.","PeriodicalId":55965,"journal":{"name":"Islamic Law and Society","volume":"27 1","pages":"83-110"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2020-02-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/15685195-00260a06","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46806633","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-02-20DOI: 10.1163/15685195-00260a08
J. Blecher
Amidst the politics of the Mamluk-era spice route, why did the standard-bearers of Islamic law routinely oppose the sultanate’s imposition of an alms-tax on merchandise (zakāt al-tijāra), despite the abundance of support for such a tax within the classical tradition of Islamic law? Rather than contending – as some modern scholars have – that prominent jurists developed loopholes that circumvented the original intent of the law to protect the wealthy and the ruling class, I argue that it was precisely the jurists’ careful defense of exemptions and exclusions that allowed them to define the essence of zakāt against forms of taxation they considered unlawful. By narrowing the scope of zakāt, jurists attempted to achieve a moral aim that went beyond the ritual purification of wealth: a limit on the sultanate’s otherwise arbitrary power to tax Muslims as it wished. In doing so, they alleviated some of the tax burden for spice merchants and camel herders alike.
{"title":"Scholars, Spice Traders, and Sultans: Arguing over the Alms-Tax in the Mamluk Era","authors":"J. Blecher","doi":"10.1163/15685195-00260a08","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15685195-00260a08","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Amidst the politics of the Mamluk-era spice route, why did the standard-bearers of Islamic law routinely oppose the sultanate’s imposition of an alms-tax on merchandise (zakāt al-tijāra), despite the abundance of support for such a tax within the classical tradition of Islamic law? Rather than contending – as some modern scholars have – that prominent jurists developed loopholes that circumvented the original intent of the law to protect the wealthy and the ruling class, I argue that it was precisely the jurists’ careful defense of exemptions and exclusions that allowed them to define the essence of zakāt against forms of taxation they considered unlawful. By narrowing the scope of zakāt, jurists attempted to achieve a moral aim that went beyond the ritual purification of wealth: a limit on the sultanate’s otherwise arbitrary power to tax Muslims as it wished. In doing so, they alleviated some of the tax burden for spice merchants and camel herders alike.","PeriodicalId":55965,"journal":{"name":"Islamic Law and Society","volume":"27 1","pages":"53-82"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2020-02-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/15685195-00260a08","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44815774","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-10-30DOI: 10.1163/15685195-00264P04
Justin Jones
Over the last four years, India has become the centre for a major experiment in the implementation of a so-called ‘gender-just Islam’ by Islamic feminist organisations: the formation of a non-official, female-led sharī‘ah court network, within which women serve as qāẓīs (religious judges) to adjudicate disputes within Muslim families. Presenting themselves as counterweights to more patriarchal legal bodies, including both the official judiciary and unofficial dispute resolution forums, these sharī‘ah ‘adālats employ both state-centred and community-focused strategies to assist Muslim women experiencing marital or family-related strife. Based on interviews with female qāẓīs and associated documentary sources, I examine how the women who run these courts adjudicate family conflicts according to what they understand as both the Qur’an’s ethical teachings, and its stipulations regarding the proper methods of dispute resolution. I also argue that these all-female sharī‘ah ‘adālats reflect a shift of focus away from court litigation and legislative intervention, and towards non-state, arbitration-focused practices, as the most fruitful means to protect the needs of Muslim women in contemporary India.
{"title":"‘Where Only Women May Judge’: Developing Gender-Just Islamic Laws in India’s All-Female ‘Sharī‘ah Courts’","authors":"Justin Jones","doi":"10.1163/15685195-00264P04","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15685195-00264P04","url":null,"abstract":"Over the last four years, India has become the centre for a major experiment in the implementation of a so-called ‘gender-just Islam’ by Islamic feminist organisations: the formation of a non-official, female-led sharī‘ah court network, within which women serve as qāẓīs (religious judges) to adjudicate disputes within Muslim families. Presenting themselves as counterweights to more patriarchal legal bodies, including both the official judiciary and unofficial dispute resolution forums, these sharī‘ah ‘adālats employ both state-centred and community-focused strategies to assist Muslim women experiencing marital or family-related strife. Based on interviews with female qāẓīs and associated documentary sources, I examine how the women who run these courts adjudicate family conflicts according to what they understand as both the Qur’an’s ethical teachings, and its stipulations regarding the proper methods of dispute resolution. I also argue that these all-female sharī‘ah ‘adālats reflect a shift of focus away from court litigation and legislative intervention, and towards non-state, arbitration-focused practices, as the most fruitful means to protect the needs of Muslim women in contemporary India.","PeriodicalId":55965,"journal":{"name":"Islamic Law and Society","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2019-10-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/15685195-00264P04","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42559277","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-09-13DOI: 10.1163/15685195-00264p07
{"title":"Contents to Volume 26 (2019)","authors":"","doi":"10.1163/15685195-00264p07","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15685195-00264p07","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":55965,"journal":{"name":"Islamic Law and Society","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2019-09-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/15685195-00264p07","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47959249","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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