Fatwas for European Muslims: the Minority Fiqh Project and the Integration of Islam in Europe

FATWAS FOR EUROPEAN MUSLIMS: THE MINORITY FIQH PROJECT AND THE INTEGRATION OF ISLAM IN EUROPE Alexandre Vasconcelos Caeiro Fatwas for European Muslims: The Minority Fiqh Project and the Integration of Islam in Europe Fatwas voor Europese moslims: het project voor een fiqh voor minderheden en de integratie van de islam in Europa (met een samenvatting in het Nederlands) Proefschrift ter verkrijging van de graad van doctor aan de Universiteit Utrecht op gezag van de rector magnificus, prof.dr. G.J. van der Zwaan, ingevolge het besluit van het college voor promoties in het openbaar te verdedigen op vrijdag 1 juli 2011 des middags te 2.30 uur door Alexandre Vasconcelos Caeiro geboren op 22 februari 1978 te Lissabon, Portugal Promotor: Prof.dr. M. M. van Bruinessen This thesis was accomplished with financial support from the International Institute for the Study of Islam in the Modern World (ISIM) TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements v Transliteration vi Introduction 3 Part One: Muslim Theorizations Chapter 1: The Shifting Moral Universes of the Islamic Tradition of Ifta’ 13 Chapter 2: Theorizing Islam without the State: Debates on Minority Fiqh 45 Part Two: The European Council for Fatwa and Research Chapter 3: The Dynamics of Consultation 123 Chapter 4: Textual Relations of Authority 181 Chapter 5: Imagining an Islamic Counterpublic 209 Conclusion 233 Bibliography 241 Appendices 263 Samenvatting Curriculum Vitae Acknowledgements This work would not have been possible without a PhD fellowship from 2004- 2008 from the International Institute for the Study of Islam in the Modern World (ISIM) in Leiden, and the support - since 2009 - of the Erlangen Centre for Islam and Law in Europe (EZIRE) at the Friedrich-Alexander Universität in Nürnberg-Erlangen. The dissertation was written in Leiden, Paris and Cairo. As a student exploring different academic fields I have incurred many debts along the way. My thanks go first of all to my supervisor Martin van Bruinessen for his enduring support, critical insight, and generosity. Along with Asef Bayat, Annelies Moors and Abdulkader Tayob, Martin helped to make ISIM the excellent research institute that it was until the inexplicable decision in late 2008 to close it down. I am also particularly grateful to Mathias Rohe and Jörn Thielmann of EZIRE for their trust and for allowing me to contribute to a research centre on Islam and Law in Europe from Egypt. I am fortunate to be part of a stimulating research network on Islam in Europe that includes many friends. Jeanette Jouili and Frank Peter in particular have been close partners in this endeavour for many years: I have learnt more than I can say from each of them. Although I cannot thank every person who has contributed to this work, I would like to extend my gratitude for stimulating discussions, guidance and encouragement to Hussein Agrama, Ahmet Alibasic, Schirin Amir-Moazami, Valérie Amiraux, Elena Arigita, Mohamed Bouhlel, John Bowen, Jocelyne Césari, Nadia Fadil, Mohammad Ghaly, Bettina Gräf, Heiko Henkel, Ahmad Jaballah, Farhad Khosrokhavar, Martijn de Koning, Zied Ladhari, Nico Landman, Lena Larsen, Tahar Mahdi, Amin Muhammad, Junaid Quadri, Umar Ryad, Mahmoud al-Saify and Laila Al-Zwaini. My heartfelt thanks to the secretary-general of the European Council for Fatwa and Research, Shaykh Hussein Halawa, for giving me access to the council and allowing me to attend its sessions, and to the members of the ECFR for taking the time to answer my questions and helping my research. A final and special word of thanks of course to ES, EL, MAC. V VI Transliteration This dissertation uses a simplified rendering of Arabic names without diacritics. There are occasional inconsistencies related to the fact that I have kept the renderings of Arabic names that are used by the authors themselves when writing in European languages. VII INTRODUCTION Introduction On one shore lies a ship about to sail, or perhaps already on its way. It is heading towards a mountainous and inhospitable territory. Leaving behind a land of mosques and minarets – ostentatiously symbolizing the lands of Islam (dar al-islam) – the ship appears to be sailing in order to bring assistance to an outstretched hand on the other shore silently crying out for help. The only visible part of a sinking body, the hand stands metonymically for those immigrant Muslims forced for some reason to live in exile in non-Muslim territory (dar al-kufr or dar al-harb). They are called al-mughtaribin – the estranged, from the same Arabic root (gh r b) from which the West (al-gharb) is also constructed. According to the title of the book from which the picture described here is drawn, they are facing an emergency situation. Entitled The Urgent Need of the Immigrants for the Fatwas of the Pious Scholars (Is‘af al- Mughtaribin bi-Fatawa al-‘Ulama al-Rabbaniyyin), the book presents a selection of fatwas – the assistance which is required according to its author - by a panel of famous Saudi scholars on various topics relevant for Muslims living in Western lands (Qahtani 2007). The connections between Muslim lands and non-Muslim countries, and the increasing sense of urgency that underlies orthodox Muslim conversations on the plight of the minorities living in the West highlighted by the book, are the subject of this dissertation. These connections may not be well known, much less well studied, but they certainly are proliferating. Consider the following: - A Muslim scholar recently arrived in the USA sends in 1985 a number of questions to the fiqh councils in the Muslim world, including the International Fiqh Council in Jeddah, al-Azhar in Cairo and the imam Khomeini in Iran. He gets summary answers to complex problems, and decides to write a text outlining the need to pay particular attention to the questions of Muslim minorities. The text circulates widely – it is posted online, published in book format in Cairo and Beirut, translated into English, French, and Russian. A Kuwaiti scholar writes a refutation of the text and publishes it in the review of a transnational fiqh council 3 based in Europe, while a Syrian shaykh condemns the same text in a khutba widely relayed through the internet. The original text becomes the starting point for a global discussion about the rights and duties of Muslims in the West. - A Muslim from the Netherlands asks the Mufti of Egypt for a fatwa on working in a Dutch supermarket that sells alcohol and pork. The mufti answers and posts the fatwa on the website of Dar al-Ifta’ al-Misriyya on December 17, 2005. The fatwa reaches the United States, where an American-Egyptian Muslim scholar writes a refutation of the fatwa in Arabic and submits it to the Fiqh Council of North America. Approved by the Council, the response is made available in print and translated into English. Western students being trained in shari‘a at Al-Azhar read both texts and debate the respective pros and cons. - A Lebanese Sunni scholar who lived in France in the 1980s – Faysal Mawlawi - writes a book on the rights and duties of Muslims in Europe. He presents his views to an assembly of Muslim scholars in Europe – the European Council for Fatwa and Research. The International Union of Muslim Scholars subsequently publishes the book in Cairo in 2008. A critical reply by a Saudi intellectual who also lived in France in the 1980s – ‘Adnan al-Nahwi - appears in print the same year. - A recently-converted woman married to a non-Muslim man visits the imam of the Islamic Cultural Centre of Ireland to ask about the status of her marriage. The imam sends the question to Yusuf al-Qaradawi in Qatar. The question is intensively debated in international fiqh councils and the debates are relayed by the Arabic-language print and electronic media. Qaradawi changes his mind and publishes his revised opinion in a book which is read by a professor of Al-Azhar who – noting the international dimension of the discussion - publishes his response in Cairo. 4 - A team of French-Maghrebi Muslim intellectuals draw on the findings of a research project funded by the European Union on the exclusion and marginalisation of Muslims to argue that home ownership has become a collective need of European Muslims. They suggest that fiqh restrictions on high-street mortgages (because of interest) be eased in minority contexts. A collective fiqh council convenes first in Sarajevo, then in Köln and finally in Dublin, in order to discuss the matter. After heated discussion the majority accepts the opinion. Dissenting members publish their opposition in the London-based newspaper Al- Sharq Al-Awsat. Articles in the media and opinions in the cyberspace proliferate. An Egyptian-American scholar writes a “polite refutation” of the fatwa in Arabic and makes it available online. Muslim activists in the United Kingdom and Belgium then publish the refutation in the local languages. A less polite refutation is articulated in Damascus, and in the pages of magazines and periodicals. These debates, and the networks and spaces that underlie them, lie at the heart of this dissertation. Unlike the transnational threats posed by terrorist organizations, they hardly ever elicit a line in Western mainstream media. They rarely implicate the state and its agencies.1 These discussions nevertheless provide important insights into larger Muslim debates on what it means to be a believer in a Western context. In this dissertation I explore how a range of Muslim public intellectuals – traditional scholars, imams, social scientists, and others – debate the requirements for being a good Muslim in societies and states that do not claim to be in any sense Islamic (and even in many ways seek to define themselves today in opposition to Islam).

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