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4 - Islamic law: history and transformation

from PART I - RELIGION AND LAW

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2011

By
Wael Hallaq
Edited by
Robert Irwin
Robert Irwin
Affiliation:
School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
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Summary

Introduction

If we must refer to the sharῑʿa as ‘Islamic law’, then we must do so with considerable caution. The latter expression bears a connotation that combines modern notions of law with a particular brand of modern politics, both of which were largely – if not entirely – absent from the original landscape of the sharῑʿa we are considering here. Throughout the last three or four centuries European modernity has produced legal systems and legal doctrines that are almost exclusively the preserve of the equally modern nation-state. Intrinsic to its behaviour, the modern state is systemically and systematically geared towards the transformation and homogenisation of both the social order and the national citizen, features that have a direct bearing on law. To accomplish these goals the state engages in systemic surveillance, discipline and punishment. Its educational and cultural institutions, among others, are designed to manufacture the citizen who is respectful of law, submissive to notions of order and discipline, industrious and economically productive. Without the law and its tools of surveillance and punishment, no state apparatus can exist. Ergo the centrality, in the definition and concept of the state, of the element of violence, and of the state’s exclusive right to threaten its use.

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The New Cambridge History of Islam , pp. 142 - 183
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2010

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