Introduction 1. Custom and Islamic Law in Modern Scholarship
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Notes Introduction 1. Custom has often been considered one of the most important sources of law, in addition to legislation, precedent, and equity. See Harold Berman, Law and Revolution: The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983), 11. See also, Christoph Kletzer, “Custom and Positivity: An Examination of the Philosophic Ground of the Hegel-Savigny Controversy” in The Nature of Customary Law, eds. Amanda Perreau-Saussine and James B. Murphy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 130–134. Despite the modern misgivings about the legal status of custom, some would argue that custom is at the very foundations of ethical principles, written laws, and philo- sophical views because they, ultimately, are nothing but reformulations of pre- existing customs. See Kletzer, “Custom and Positivity,” 1. 2. It may be argued that these legal reforms codified the role of custom in civil law systems but not in Islamic law proper. The fact remains, however, that these civil law systems did not renounce sharí<ah altogether. In fact, sharí<ah was often listed as one of the main sources of these laws. These legal reforms turned sharí<ah from being the sole source of the legal system into one source among others. In the present context, I am mainly concerned with the impact that this development had on the modern reconstructions of the Islamic legal tradition in general and Islamic legal theory in particular. 3. Friedrich M. Müller, preface to “Chips from a German Woodshop” in Thinking About Religion, A Reader, ed. Ivan Strenski (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2006), 51. 4. Qur>ån 35:43. In this sense, the concept of custom is closer to the concept of nature or established order than to the concept of a customary practice. I shall elaborate on this point further in chapter 2 and in the conclusion. 5. See, for example, Albert Hourani, Islam in European Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 14. 1. Custom and Islamic Law in Modern Scholarship 1. Gradually each of these debates inspired many other subdebates. For example, the debate on the origins soon developed into two major debates on the Qur>ån 174 Notes and Sunnah respectively. As far as the debate on the origins of Islamic law is concerned, more emphasis was placed on the Sunnah rather than the Qur>ån. On the Qur>ån debate see John Wansbrough, Qur>anic Studies: Sources and Methods of Scriptural Interpretation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977) and John Burton, The Collection of the Quran (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977). For a recent restatement of the classical Orientalist views see Herbert Berg ed., Method and Theory in the Study of Islamic Origins (Leiden: Brill, 2003). For a rebuttal of their argument see Muhammad Mustafa Azami, The History of the Quranic Text from Revelation to Compilation: A Comparative Study with the Old and New Testament (Leicester: UK Islamic Academy, 2003). For the Sunnah debate see Ignaz Goldziher, Muslim Studies (London: Allen and Unwin, 1967) and Joseph Schacht, The Origins of Muhammadan Jurisprudence (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959) and An Introduction to Islamic Law (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964). For a review and rebuttal see Muhammad Mustafa Azami, On Schacht’s Origins of Muhammadan Jurisprudence (New York: Wiley, 1985); Yasin Dutton, The Origins of Islamic Law: The Qur>ån, the Muwatta, and the Madinan Amal (Surrey: Curzon, 1999); Harald Motzki, The Origins of Islamic Jursprudence: Meccan Fiqh before Classical Schools (Leiden: Brill, 2002); and Scott Lucas, Constructive Critics, Hadith Literature and the Articulation of Sunni Islam: The Legacy of the Generation of Ibn Sa<d, Ibn Ma<în, and Ibn ¯anbal (Leiden: Brill, 2004). 2. The term Orientalist scholarship is usually used to refer to the studies of Western scholars, mainly philologists, on the orient and oriental cultures in general and Arab and Muslim cultures in particular. There is already an exten- sive body of literature, inspired by the work of Edward Said, that analyzes the different aspects of this scholarship. Here I am mainly concerned with the impact of the Western Orientalist scholarship on the construction of the role of custom in the Islamic legal tradition. See, for example, Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1979) and Alexander Lyon Macfie, ed., Orientalism A Reasder (New York: New York University Press, 2000. 3. This date range is determined based on the sources consulted in the present study. 4. Jacques Waardenburg’s treatment of the divide between official or normative and popular religion in the field of Islamic studies provides useful insights on the roots of the problem. This is of great relevance to the issue at hand because as Waardenburg’s discussion illustrates, both “customs” and “Islamic law” would mean different things to different people. See Jacques Waardenburg “Official and Popular Religion as a Problem in Islamic Studies,” in Jacques Waardenburg et al., Official and Popular Religion as a Theme in the Study of Religion (The Hague: Mouton, 1979), 340–368. In this article, Waardenburg’s conclusion was that the process of consistent modernization and rationalization associated with the more secular application of Islam would eventually lead to the gradual replacement of both official and popular versions of Islam by a new state of affairs (p. 371). This conclusion is particularly significant because it reveals the type of intellectual projections current at the time of the book’s publication. Recently, the author has offered insightful reflections on the evolution of his personal understand- ing of the subject, as well as the field in the past 50 years. See Waardenburg Notes 175 Islam: Historical, Social, and Political Perspectives (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2002), 1–19 and Muslims as Actors, (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2007). 5. There are several scholarly works that review and evaluate the works of the scholars who took part in these debates since their inception. Some of the works I was able to consult are: Stephen Humphreys, Islamic History: A Framework for Inquiry (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), 70–103; Norman Calder, Studies in Early Muslim Jurisprudence (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 198–222; Tarif Khalidi, Arabic Historical Thought in the Classical Period (New York: Cambridge, 1994), 20–28; Harald Motzki, The Origins of Islamic Jursprudence: Meccan Fiqh before Classical Schools (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 2–49; Sherman Jackson, Islamic Law and the State: The Constitutional Jurisprudence of Shihab al-Din al-Qarafi (Leiden: Brill, 1996); Ahmad A. Ahmad, Structural Interrelations of Theory and Practice in Islamic Law : A Study of Six Works of Medieval Islamic Jurisprudence (Leiden: Brill, 2006); Haim Gerber, Islamic Law and Culture, 1600–1840 (Leiden: Brill, 1999); and Frank Vogel, “The State of the Field: A Major Advance is Imminent,” The Newsletter of the Islamic Legal Studies Program at Harvard Law School 11, no. 2 (2006): 1–4. 6. Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje, Mohammedanism: Lectures on its Origins, its Religious and Political Growth, and Its Present State (New York: Putnam’s Sons, 1916), 22. Goldziher notes: “It is astonishing that foreign cultural influences had an effect on the evolution of this legal method and on various details of its application. Islamic jurisprudence shows undeniable traces of the influence of Roman law both in its methodology and in its particular stipulation.” See Ignaz Goldziher, Introduction to Islamic Theology and Law (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), 44. See also Goldziher, Muslim Studies (London: Allen and Unwin, 1967); Joseph Schacht, “Foreign Elements in Ancient Islamic Law” in The Formation of Islamic Law, ed. Wael Hallaq (Burlington: Ashgate/Variorum Publishing Limited, 2004), 60–67; and Joseph Schacht, An Introduction, 21, Patricia Crone, Roman, Provincial and Islamic Law, the Origins of the Islamic Patronate, (New York: Cambridge, 1987). For a rebuttal of Crone’s argument see Wael Hallaq, “The Use and Abuse of Evidence: The Question of Provincial and Roman Influences on Early Islamic Law” Journal of American Oriental Society 110, no. 1(1990): 79–91. 7. Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje, The Achehnese (Leyden: Brill, 1906). 8. Interest in the “origins issue” has not dissipated. See Wael Hallaq, The Origins and Evolution of Islamic Law (New York: Cambridge, 2005), 1–7. 9. G. C. J. J. Van den Bergh, “The Concept of Folk Law in Historical Context: A Brief Outline” in Folk Law: Essays in the Theory and Practice of Lex Non Scripta, eds. Alison D. Renteln and Alan Dundes (New York: Garland Publishing, 1994), 17; William Graham, “Traditionalism in Islam: An Essay in Interpretation,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 23, no. 3 (1993): 495–522. 10. Alison D. Renteln and Alan Dundes, “What is Folk Law” in Folk Law, 3. 11. See, for example, Encyclopedia of Islam, 2nd ed. vol. I, s.v. “Ada” and vol. X, s.v. “Urf.” 12. T. O. Beidelman, W. Robertson Smith and the Sociological Study of Religion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974), 6. 176 Notes 13. Jacques Waardenburg, ed., Classical Approaches to the Study of Religion (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1999), 150. 14. Ivan Strenski, Thinking About Religion: An Historical Introduction to Theories of Religion (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2006), 126. 15. Ibid., 122. It was a common practice among European travelers to dress like the local population and to take up familiar local names in order to ensure ease of movement and to avoid being spotted as outsiders. See, for example, Walter Besant, The Life and Achievements of Edward Henry Palmer (London: J. Murray, 1883), 99, 247. 16. See also. Smith “A Journey in the Hijaz” in Lectures and Essays of William Robertson Smith, eds. John Sutherland Black and George Chrystal (London: A. and C. Black, 1912), 484–597. 17. Ibid., 483. 18. Beidelman, W. Robertson Smith, 43. Also see Robert Segal’s introduction to the new edition of Smith’s Religion of the Semites (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2002).