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THE POWER OF EUROPEAN FATWAS: THE MINORITY FIQH PROJECT AND THE MAKING OF AN ISLAMIC COUNTERPUBLIC

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 July 2010

Alexandre Caeiro
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Extract

What does it mean to “integrate” a complex and multifaceted tradition such as Islam into a transnational space as heterogeneous as that of modern Europe? And what kind of a project is precisely that of a “European Islam,” increasingly invoked today across the continent by a wide range of state and nonstate actors, including many Muslims? At a time dominated by variants of the clash of civilizations thesis, the project appears rather equivocal. What conceptions of Europe as a political space, and of Islam as a religious tradition, underlie the endeavor?

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International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 42 , Issue 3 , August 2010 , pp. 435 - 449
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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References

NOTES

Author's Note: An earlier version of this article was presented at an international conference on 26–27 May 2007 at the Robert Schuman Center for Advanced Studies of the European University Institute in Florence. The conference was organized by Valérie Amiraux and Lasse Lindekilde in the framework of the MUSMINE initiative. Entitled “Muslim Mobilization and Claims-Making in Secular Europe and Beyond: An Inter-Disciplinary Challenge?,” the event gathered European and North American scholars from different disciplines, working on theories of collective action (Daniel Cefaï, Mario Diani, Donatella della Porta), sociology of religion (Paul Lichterman), and ethnicity and migration (Paul Statham, Virginie Guiraudon) to discuss new research in comparative perspective. This paper benefited from a fellowship from the (now extinct) International Institute for the Study of Islam in the Modern World in Leiden, The Netherlands. The author thanks Martin van Bruinessen, Jeanette Jouili, and Ebrahim Moosa for their careful reading of an earlier version of the paper. I am also grateful to the editors and three anonymous reviewers of IJMES for their insightful comments and to Valérie Amiraux for her persistence in bringing the paper to print. The usual disclaimers apply.

1 Caeiro, Alexandre, “The Social Construction of Sharī'a: Bank Interest, Home Purchase, and Islamic Norms in the West,” Die Welt des Islams 44 (2004): 351–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dien, Mawil Izzi, Islamic Law: From Historical Foundations to Contemporary Practice (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005)Google Scholar; Karman, Karen-Lise Johansen, Rethinking Islamic Jurisprudence for Muslim Minorities: The Politics and the Work of Contemporary Fatwa Councils (Aarhus, Denmark: University of Aarhus, 2008)Google Scholar; Rohe, Mathias, “The Formation of a European Sharī'a,” in Muslims in Europe: From the Margin to the Centre, ed. Malik, Jamal (Münster, Germany: Lit Verlag, 2004)Google Scholar; Shadid, W. A. and van Koningsveld, P. S., “Religious Authorities of Muslims in the West: Their Views on Political Participation,” in Shadid and van Koningsveld, eds., Intercultural Relations and Religious Authorities: Muslims in the European Union (Leuven, Belgium: Peeters, 2003)Google Scholar.

2 On the dangers of culturalism in the study of Islamic normativity see Dupret, Baudouin, “What is Islamic Law? A Praxiological Answer and an Egyptian Case Study,” Theory, Culture & Society 24 (2007): 79–100CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Warner, Michael, “Publics and Counterpublics,” Public Culture 14 (2002): 49–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 For a different approach to minority fiqh discourse see March's, Andrew important contribution, Islam and Liberal Citizenship: The Search for an Overlapping Consensus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 European Council for Fatwa and Research, First and Second Collections of Fatwas (Qararat wa-Fatawa li-l-Majlis al-Urubbi li-l-Ifta' wa-l-Buhuth), trans. Anas Osama Altikriti and Shaikh Nasif Al-Ubaydi (Cairo: Islamic INC/Al-Falah Foundation, 2002), 1–2.

6 ECFR, First and Second Collections of Fatwas, 2 (italics mine). By contrast, “misguided” fatwas “bring harm and shame to Islam,” encouraging Muslims to steal, forge, and cheat (xi).

7 On the qawāʿid see Heinrichs, Wolfhart, “Qawāʿid as a Genre of Legal Literature,” in Studies in Islamic Legal History, ed. Peters, Ruud and Weiss, Bernard (Leiden/Boston/Köln: E. J. Brill, 2002)Google Scholar.

8 The ambiguity stems from the notion of “reality” itself. In the fatwas of the ECFR, reality sometimes refers to a naturalized condition—for example, the reality of men's sexual appetites, used to justify polygamy—and sometimes to a more or less pressing social constraint (such as that which justifies the presence of women and men in shared spaces). As many sociologists have shown, reality is always in part socially constructed, and clearly not enough research has been done on what counts as reality in Muslim and non-Muslim engagements with the “Muslim question” in Europe.

9 It is not surprising that concepts of “need” and “necessity” have been at the heart of many controversial debates within the ECFR. See, for example, ʿAbd Allah Bin Bayyah, “al-Farq bayna al-Darura wa-l-Haja Tatbiqan ʿala Baʿd Ahwal al-Aqaliyyat al-Muslima,” al-Majalla al-ʿIlmiyya li-l-Majlis al-Urubbi li-l-Iftaʾ wa-l-Buhuth 4–5 (2004): 93–145.

10 ECFR, First and Second Collections of Fatwas, ix.

11 On the notion of “civil Islam” as an accommodating religion in Europe, see Peter, Frank, “Rationalités du pouvoir et incorporation de l'islam: une comparaison anglo-française,” Sociologie & Sociétés 38 (2006): 183–212CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 ECFR, First and Second Collections, xii and 2. I borrow the distinction between authoritative and authoritarian discourse from El Fadl, Khaled Abou, Speaking in God's Name: Islamic Law, Authority and Women (Oxford: One World, 2002)Google Scholar. On wasaṭiyya see al-Qaradawi, Yusuf, Kalimat fi al-Wasatiyyat al-Islamiyya wa-Maʿalimiha (Cairo: Dar al-Shuruk, 2008)Google Scholar and Bettina Gräf, “The Concept of wasaṭiyya in the Work of Yūsuf al-Qaraḍāwī,” in The Global Mufti: The Phenomenon of Yūsuf al-Qaraḍāwī, ed. Bettina Gräf and J. Skovgaard-Petersen (London: Hurst, 2009), 213–38.

13 ECFR, First and Second Collections, xi, xii, 13, 23, 33.

14 Tareq Oubrou, one of the leading authorities of the Union des Organisations Islamiques de France (a founding member of the ECFR), expresses this ambivalence most clearly through the imagination of the “negative fatwa” as a form of “canonical silence.” See Tareq Oubrou, “La sharî'a de minorité: réflexions pour une intégration légale de l'islam,” in Lectures contemporaines du droit islamique—Europe et monde arabe, ed. Franck Frégosi (Strasbourg, France: Presses universitaires de Strasbourg, 2004), 205–30. Although Oubrou's constructs are by no means shared by all the members of the Union des Organisations Islamiques de France—not to mention those that sit in the ECFR—his anxiety concerning a vicious circle of fatwas and counter-fatwas diluting all religious authority appears to be widespread. On Oubrou see Cédric Baylocq Sassoubre, “Questions de pratiquants et réponses d'imam en contexte français. Economie de la fatwa dans les ‘consultations juridiques’ de Tareq Oubrou,” Revue des mondes musulmans et de la Méditerranée 124 (2008): 281–308, as well as my own “The Shifting Moral Universes of the Islamic Tradition of Iftāʾ: A Diachronic Study of Four Adab al-Fatwā Manuals,” Muslim World 96 (2006): 661–85.

15 A public in this definition differs from crowds, audiences, bounded communities, formal organizations, or social movements in important ways. Its address is both personal and impersonal: the former confers upon a public a sense of “practical possibility,” while the latter enables a “hope of transformation.” Warner, “Publics and Counterpublics,” 64.

16 Warner, “Publics and Counterpublics,” 56.

17 The idea that subjects are constituted through modes of “hailing” or “interpellation” originates in Louis Althusser's often-cited essay “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes towards an Investigation),” in his Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1971), especially 170–83. I draw inspiration here from Ruth Mas' stimulating analysis of secular Muslims in France, “Compelling the Muslim Subject: (Post)Colonial Violence, Memory and the Public Performativity of ‘Secular/Cultural Islam,’” Muslim World 96 (2006): 585–616, and the discussion of the consequences of Khomeini's fatwa against Rushdie in Khan, Shehla, “Muslims!” in A Postcolonial People: South Asians in Britain, ed. Ali, Nasreen, Kalra, Virinder S., and Sayyid, S. (London: Hurst, 2005), 182–87Google Scholar.

18 As Warner argues in “Publics and Counterpublics,” the relationship of any public to the political field depends crucially on its regularity: “the more punctual and abbreviated the circulation, and the more discourse indexes the punctuality of its own circulation, the closer a public stands to politics” (68). The biannual rhythm of the ECFR's meetings prevents the fatwa council from maintaining a high public presence and from acting more proactively in public debates.

19 This list of media outlets is not intended to be exhaustive. The fatwas of the ECFR have also prompted debates in publications as different as the French Muslim magazine La Médina, the Egyptian periodical Ruz al-Yusuf, and the specialized magazine of the Muslim World League's International Fiqh Council. The fatwa collections have also been published in several languages, including French and Albanian, and there have long been plans to translate the fatwas into German, Urdu, and Bosnian. The question of how the minority fiqh project relates specifically to Muslims in the Balkans cannot be addressed here.

20 Bowen, John, “Beyond Migration: Islam as a Transnational Public Space,” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 30 (2004): 879–94, here 880CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21 al-Qaradawi, Yusuf, Fi Fiqh al-Aqalliyyat al-Muslima (Cairo: Dar al-Shuruk, 2001), 31Google Scholar. The acknowledgement of the limits of the language of fiqh by Qaradawi and other muftis appears unconvincing to many Muslims, who consider the mode of reasoning underlying the fatwa to be by definition binary and simplistic. It is interesting that such critiques resonate—at least in part—within the ECFR. Scholars such as Taha Jabir al-ʿAlwani go as far as criticizing the “fiqhi mentality” of Muslims, thereby reminding us that a critique of legalism is intrinsic to the Islamic legal tradition.

22 See al-Alwani, Taha Jabir, Towards a Fiqh for Minorities: Some Basic Reflections (London/Washington, D.C.: International Institute of Islamic Thought, 2003), 3Google Scholar. Although the suggestion made by the leadership of the Association of Muslim Social Scientists to establish a partnership with the ECFR has not been taken up, the holding of conferences on topics such as “Religiosity in Europe” or the presence of prominent scholars such as P. S. van Koningsveld and Olivier Roy in recent meetings of the ECFR demonstrate the urge to incorporate the social sciences into the fiqh reflections. Furthermore, although the bounded format of the fatwa appears closed, the editorials of the scientific magazine of the council make clear that the research process is continuous and that any fatwa may be subsequently corrected and revised.

23 Qaradawi quoted in Skovgaard-Petersen, Jakob, “The Global Mufti,” in Globalization and the Muslim World: Culture, Religion, and Modernity, ed. Schaebler, Birgit and Stenberg, Leif (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 2004), 156Google Scholar. This statement should be seen as a rearticulation of the famous Prophetic injunction for the Muslim to consult his own heart even if the mufti has given him a fatwa.

24 Qaradawi, Où est la faille? Réflexions sur la crise du monde de l'islam (Paris: Editions Maison d'Ennour, 2004). Also noteworthy are the ECFR recommendation for Muslims in Europe to be “creative in all fields” and the insistence by the editors of the ECFR's scientific review on the necessity of “originality” for publishing in their review.

25 Arguing against Nancy Fraser's classic representation of counterpublics as oppositional spaces in relation to the mainstream (and male-dominated) public sphere, Warner suggests that counterpublics should be seen as those publics that struggle against a dominant public not only in terms of “ideas or policy questions” but also in their constitutive “speech genres and modes of address”: “the discourse that constitutes it is not merely a different or alternative idiom, but one that in other contexts would be regarded with hostility or with a sense of indecorousness” (86). On the notion of counterpublic see also the compelling study of Egyptian cassette sermons in Hirschkind, Charles, The Ethical Soundscape (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006)Google Scholar.

26 Sheikh Muhammad Abdu of the Al-Falah Foundation for Translation, Publication & Distribution, in his preface to Qaradawi, Fiqh of Muslim Minorities: Contentious Issues & Recommended Solutions (Cairo: Al Falah, 2003), viii. I am trying to draw a contrast here between this public and Hirschkind's description of the Islamic counterpublic in Egypt centered on the figure of the “ethical listener.” Given that these two publics are not simply two different geographical articulations of the impetus of the Islamic Revival but probably coexist and overlap, in Egypt as well as in Europe, the Muslim reader may complement the figure of the ethical listener in drawing a denser landscape of contemporary forms of Islamic piety. In fact, the figure of the Muslim reader often seems to be constructed in opposition to the perceived excesses of the sermon-listening public: although Qaradawi, for example, acknowledges that audiocassettes are a legitimate means of acquiring knowledge, he warns that not only do some tapes “do more harm than good, for they are not based on the authentic sources of the shari'a” but also many preachers “focus on implanting fear, in an exaggerated way, in people's hearts about the punishments in the grave and the Hereafter. Thus they make things difficult for people rather than easy, and adopt an approach that intimidates rather than calls people to do good.” http://www.islamonline.net/servlet/Satellite?pagename=IslamOnline-English-Ask_Scholar/FatwaE/FatwaE&cid=1119503548892 (accessed 26 May 2008). Qaradawi's taysīr fī al-fatwā approach thus acquires its full meaning. More generally, Qaradawi's reliance on the written text as “the most valuable and effective source of obtaining knowledge and culture” appears to reverse a centuries-old Islamic tradition of distrust of the written word.

27 For an explicit consideration of the dangers for religious authority implied in today's “banalization of reading” and “proliferation of printed books,” see ʿAbd al-Rahman ibn Muʿala al-Luwihiq's al-Mawsum bi-Qawaʾid fi al-Taʿamul maʿa al-ʿUlamaʾ. In this treatise, approved by the late Ibn Baz, the Muslim scholar traces the rise of readers as an intermediate group between the scholars and the commoners, and he draws on a traditional distrust of reading (and the written word) to argue in favor of the scholarship acquired at great cost at the hands of the ʿulamaʾ. For the real scholar, al-Luwihiq states, “knowledge does not come after a one-night's reading, but after countless sleepless nights and days of suffering” (30). More broadly, the emergence of a literary genre seeking to explain “the causes of scholarly disagreement,” both in Arabic and increasingly in European languages, can be related to the exponential expansion of printed Islamic books—and often includes explicit references to the challenges caused by this expansion.

28 See, inter alia, the fatwas by Ibn ʿUthaymin on how to deal with books of knowledge, http://www.islamqa.com/ar/ref/10690 (accessed 26 May 2008) and on the disadvantages of limiting oneself only to books, http://www.islamqa.com/ar/ref/10678 (accessed 26 May 2008); see also, by Qaradawi, a fatwa on the knowledge of the shariʿa that is compulsory for Muslims to acquire, and on the means of acquiring it, http://www.islamonline.net/servlet/Satellite?pagename=IslamOnline-English-Ask_Scholar/FatwaE/FatwaE&cid=1119503548892 (accessed 26 May 2008).

29 As Qaradawi has pointed out, quoting “a wise scholar,” “Tell me what you read, and I (will) tell you who you are,” http://www.islamonline.net/servlet/Satellite?pagename=IslamOnline-English-Ask_Scholar/FatwaE/FatwaE&cid=1119503548892 (accessed 26 May 2008).

30 Ramadan, Tariq, “Préface,” in Conseil européen des fatwas et de la recherche, Recueil de fatwas: Avis juridiques concernant les musulmans d'Europe—Série n° 1 (Lyon, France: Editions Tawhid, 2002), 13Google Scholar.

31 Although it is often alluded to, the expanding market for Islamic books in the context of the global Islamic Revival seems to have received less focused attention than it deserves. The only detailed (albeit dated) study of the various facets of the Islamic book market in Europe that I am aware of is Alaoui's, Soraya ElLes réseaux du livre islamique. Parcours parisiens (Paris: Editions CNRS, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

32 Gonzalez-Quijano, Yves, Les gens du livre. Edition et champ intellectuel dans l'Egypte républicaine (Paris: Editions CNRS, 1998)Google Scholar.

33 The two French translations of the ECFR's fatwas that I will discuss have been published in paperback only—this is not illogical if one assumes that the audience of the hardcopy edition (i.e., the religiously committed Muslim elite) in France is overwhelmingly fluent in Arabic.

34 There has recently been a proliferation of translations of fatwa collections into French, notably, by Salafi scholars. However, those of the ECFR were undoubtedly the first to target French Muslims specifically as European. By contrast to the French situation, the fatwas of the ECFR have not been commercially distributed in Britain or in Germany. In the former, a number of fatwa collections have been available in English since the 1990s, including one specifically targeting Muslim minorities (Ibn Baz and Shaykh Uthaymeen, Muslim Minorities—Fatawa Regarding Muslims Living as Minorities [Middlesex, U.K.: Message of Islam, 1998]). In the latter, the majority of the Turkish diaspora can rely on the religious-advice literature produced by the Diyanet, Milli Görüs, or Suleimanci movements in Turkish. For a study of the fatwas produced by one such movement, including the responses to questions from Turks in Europe, see Debus, Esther, Die islamisch-rechtlichen Auskünfte des Milli Gazete im Rahmen des “Fetwa-Wesen” der Türkischen Republik (Berlin: Klaus Schwarz Verlag, 1984)Google Scholar.

35 For the standard definition of objectification, see Eickelman, Dale and Piscatori, James, Muslim Politics (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996), 37–45Google Scholar. For a critique of this notion, see Mahmood, Saba, Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2005), 53–57Google Scholar.

36 Roy, Olivier, Vers un islam européen (Paris: Éditions Esprit, 1999)Google Scholar.

37 Babès, Leila, “Norme et autorité religieuse chez les jeunes musulmans de France,” in Les transformations de l'autorité religieuse, ed. Cohen, Martine, Joncheray, Jean, and Luizard, Pierre-Jean (Paris: L'Harmattan, 2004), 199–214, here 199Google Scholar.

38 For an online representation of the ideal library of the Muslim reader—which includes the French translation of the ECFR's fatwas—see “Les livres du musulman et de la musulmane,” http://aqida.over-blog.com/categorie-806535.html (accessed 29 May 2008).

39 Warner, “Publics and Counterpublics,” 55.

40 Ibid., 50.

41 Referring to the work of the ECFR, Ramadan states in Western Muslims and the Future of Islam (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 53, that “to think of our belonging to Islam in the West in terms of Otherness, adaptation to limitations, and authorized compromise (rukhas) cannot be enough and gives the impression of structural adjustments that make it possible to survive in a sort of imagined borderland but that do not provide the means really to flourish, participate in, and fully engage in our societies.”

42 Hizb ut-Tahrir, “Open Letter to the Muslims in Britain Regarding the Dangerous Call of Integration,” 17 May 2002.

43 Mahmud bin Rida Murad, “Ila al-Majlis al-Urubbi li-l-Iftaʾ: Fatwakum bi-Akhadh al-Qurud al-Ribawiyya . . . Marduda!,” al-Daʿwa, 2 December 1999, 56–7.

44 This is by no means to suggest that all of Ramadan's criticisms have been well received within the ECFR but rather to differentiate between discourses that stage competing claims to religious authority, on the one hand, and the modes of circulation of discourse in a public, on the other hand.

45 Ramadan, “Préface,” 10–17.

46 Christine Jacobsen, Staying in the Straight Path: Religious Identities and Practices among Young Muslims in Norway (PhD diss., Bergen University, 2006), 135.

47 Chebel, Malek, Manifeste pour un islam des Lumières (Paris: Hachette, 2004), 45Google Scholar.

48 A report on the foundation of the Assembly is available at http://www.islamonline.net/servlet/Satellite?c=Article_C&pagename=Zone-English-Euro_Muslims/EMELayout&cid=1203757502907 (accessed 29 May 2008).

49 Abdennour Bidar, “Islam: Questions aux candidats,” Le Monde, 8 February 2007.

50 The leaflet, distributed outside the Islamic Cultural Centre of Ireland while the ECFR was convening inside it in 2002, contained a number of fatwas by a panel of Saudi scholars and the following conclusion: “Brothers and sisters we have to warn you from the so called European committee for Fatwa since some of their Fatwas for example allow Riba (mortgage), inheritance of non muslims, mixing between male and female, masturbation, selling alcohol to non muslims. Most of the so-called scholars in the committee are part of political groups that are innovated such as Ikwan al Muslimeen. So do not listen to their wrong Fatwa [sic].”

51 Warner, “Publics and Counterpublics,” 60. Attention itself is of course a function of power: the fatwas on marriage and divorce of the mufti of Egypt, for example, elicit considerable more “attention” than those issued in Europe, where they carry no legal force.

52 See Asad, Talal, Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam (Baltimore, Md.: John Hopkins University Press, 1993), 210Google Scholar.

53 For relevant discussions of Islam in Europe as a distinctive postcolonial phenomenon, see Ali et al. eds., A Postcolonial People; Ruth Mas, “Compelling the Muslim Subject”; and Salvatore, Armando, “Making Public Space: Opportunities and Limits of Collective Action Among Muslims in Europe,” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 30 (2004): 1013–1031CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

54 For the notion of performative contradiction, see Butler, Judith, Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative (New York/London: Routledge, 1997), 130Google Scholar.

55 “On est stupéfait d'apprendre que la nécessité du conseil résulte, d'après lui même, du fait que des fatwas (édictés par d'autres) ont autorisé le vol des pays d'accueil. Certaines lectrices nous ont demandé si ce texte n'était pas un faux, mis au point par l'extrême droite pour diffamer l'islam: ce livre étant diffusé dans des librairies islamistes, il n'y a pas de raison de croire qu'il s'agirait d'un faux. . .Est-il abusif de se demander pourquoi le conseil parle de ces fatwas et les présente comme une réalité qui aurait une importance sociale telle qu'elle ait poussé à une constitution d'une assemblée permanente de religieux venus de tous les continents? Nous estimons qu'à la lecture de ces deux passages sur les vols dans les pays d'accueil, qui ne font pas l'objet par les auteurs de plus amples commentaires sur l'estimation de l'importance de ces pratiques, certains lecteurs ne peuvent qu'être poussés à des idées racistes, à des généralisations abusives. Les auteurs peuvent ils sérieusement soutenir qu'ils ignorent ce risque? Il nous semble qu'ils ne font rien pour le réduire.” http://www.c-e-r-f.org/fao-180bis.htm (accessed 28 May 2008).