N o t e s I n t r o d u c t i o n 1 . Throughout the study the word manhaj/manahij will be used in the sense of interpretational assumptions governing certain methodologies of interpreta- tion of the Qur’an and Sunna, especially in the field of Islamic legal theory ( usul-ul-fiqh ) and Qur’anic hermeneutics. 2 . See among many J. Esposito and D. Mogahed, Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think (Gallup Press, 2008). 3 . S. Allievi and J. Nielsen, ed., Muslim Networks and Transnational Communities in and across Europe (Leiden: Brill, 2003); Also the special issue in The Muslim World 96, no. 4, Frank Peter and Elena Arigita, ed., “Authorizing Islam in Europe” (2006). 4 . A. Duderija, Literature Review on religious identity construction in the context of being a new immigrant minority religion: “The Case of Western Muslims,” Journal of Immigrants and Minorities 25, no. 2, (2007):141–162. 5 . D. F. Eickelman and J. Piscatory, Muslim Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996). 6 . M . M a m d a n i , Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror (New York: Pantheon Book, 2004). 7 . What I mean by the term communities of interpretation will be explained in the main text below. 8 . A. Saeed, “Trends in Contemporary Islam: A Preliminary Attempt at a Classification,” The Muslim World 97, no. 3 (2007): 395–404. 9 . M . S h a r i f y - F u n k , Encountering the Transnational: Women, Islam, and the Politics of Interpretation (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), 23, 38. 1 0 . S h a r i f y - F u n k , Encountering the Transnational . 1 1 . I b i d . , 2 1 . 12 . The spelling of the names and the books of NTS scholars consulted in this study will be kept as they appear in the NTS literature and on their web sites. 13 . Based on my review of NTS literature, I noticed that there is a certain reluc- tance on behalf of Western-based NTS scholars to write books on manhaj . 14 . On the link between theology and legal theory, see A. Emon, Islamic Natural Law Theories (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010). 196 Notes 15 . F. Hussein, “The Ideal and Contextual Realities of Muslim Women,” in F.Hussein, ed., Muslim Women (London: Croom Helm, 1984 ), 3–6. 16 . M. Cooke, “Deploying the ‘Muslimwoman,’” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 24, no. 1 (2008): 91–119. Also see the responses to this article by lead- ing contemporary Muslim “feminists” in the same issue. 1 7 . I b i d . , 9 1 – 9 2 . 1 8 . A . B a r l a s , Believing Women in Islam: Unreading Patriarchal Interpretations of the Qur’an (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002); A. Wadud, Qur’an and Woman : Rereading the Sacred Text from a Woman’s Perspective , 2nd ed., (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). 19 . B. Stowasser, “The Status of Women in Early Islam,” in F. Hussein, ed., Muslim Women , 11–43. 2 0 . L . A l - F a r u q i , Women, Muslim Society and Islam (Indianapolis, IN: American Trust Publications, 1991), 1–17; Stowasser, “The Status of Women in Early Islam,” 11–43; 21 . See A. Duderija, “Identifying Factors Determining Religious Identity Constructions among Western born Muslims,” 371–400. 2 2 . H u s s e i n , Muslim Women , 1. 2 3 . C . K u r z m a n ( e d . ) , Liberal Islam: A Sourcebook (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 5. 2 4 . K . E l F a d l , Speaking in God’s Name: Islamic Law, Authority and Women (Oxford: Oneworld, 2001), 122–125. 25 . For example, I will argue that Shaikh Nasir Al-Albani belongs to the NTS community of interpretation based on his overall Qur’an and Sunna manhaj described in detail in Chapter four of this study, and can, thus, be considered as a representative of it, although, unlike the vast majority of NTS scholars, he does not consider the face-veil to be a normative requirement for Muslim women mandated by the Qur’an and the Sunna. 2 6 . W a d u d , The Qur’an and Woman . 2 7 . F . R a h m a n , Islam and Modernity: Transformation of an Intellectual Tradition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982). 28 . In this context, she again acknowledges her intellectual debt to F. Rahman’s double movement theory developed in his “Islam and Modernity,” which con- sists of two steps. The first movement consists of moving from the present situation to the Qur’an to elicit and to arrive systematically at its “general prin- ciples, values and long-range objectives’; the second movements entails moving from this derived general principle and apply it to the specific that is to be formulated and realized in the present. Ibid., 5–7. 2 9 . F . R a h m a n , Islam, 2nd ed., Chicago University Press, 1979. 3 0 . W a d u d , Qur’an and Woman , 1. 31 . Ibid, ix–7. 32 . Barlas, Believing Women in Islam. 3 3 . I b i d . , 2 0 3 . 3 4 . I b i d . , 8 7 . 3 5 . I b i d . , 2 0 4 . 3 6 . I b i d . , 2 0 5 . Notes 197 37 . See notes 20–22 3 8 . B a r l a s , Believing Women , 22–23. 39 . A. Saeed’s Interpreting the Qur’an: A Contemporary Approach (New York: Routledge, 2006). 4 0 . B a r l a s , Believing Women , 204. 41 . M. Arkoun, The Unthought in Contemporary Islamic Thought (London: Saqi Boks, 2002). 4 2 . F a d l , Speaking in God ’ s Name, 170–177. 4 3 . U . E c o , The Role of the Reader: Explorations in the Semiotics of Texts (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1979), 47–65. 4 4 . E l F a d l , Speaking in God’s Name , 88. 4 5 . F . E s a c k , Qur’an, Liberation and Pluralism: An Islamic Perspective of Interreligious Solidarity against Oppression (Oxford: Oneworld, 1997), 14. 46 . These terms will be left deliberately undefined here. A discussion of their meaning will be presented in the seventh chapter. 4 7 . I b i d . , 1 3 . 4 8 . I b i d . , 1 5 . 49 . Here it is noteworthy to point out that Esack has spent several years studying Biblical hermeneutics in Germany in the 1990s. 5 0 . E s a c k , Qur’an, Liberation and Pluralism, 90. 5 1 . I b i d . , 9 7 . 5 2 . M . S h a h r u r , The Qur’an, Morality and Critical Reason: The Essential Muhammad Shahrur, trans. Andreas Christman (Leiden: Brill, 2009). 53 . Shahrur, as part of his broader linguistic methodology, does not consider the words al-Kitab to mean the same as al-Qur’an. By al-Kitab he actually means the fixed text of the mushaf. To reflect this I will also use the word Al-Kitab instead of the al-Qur’an in this review section of Shahrur’s work. 54 . M. Iqbal, The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam, Oxford University Press, Humphrey Milford, 1934. 5 5 . S h a h r u r , The Qur’an, Morality and Critical Reason. 56 . See his Mafhūm al-Nass: Dirāsah fī ‘Ulūm al-Qur’ān , Beirut and Cairo 1991, 5th edition 1998. 57 . More on this in Chapter Two. 5 8 . S h a h r u r , The Qur’an, Morality and Critical Reason , 16. 59 . Shahrur, The Quran,Morality and Critical Reason, 17. 6 0 . I b i d . , 7 2 61 . What we precisely mean by this phrase will be extensively dealt with in the second and fourth chapters. 6 2 . I b i d . , p p . 1 0 1 - 1 0 2 . 6 3 . I b i d . , 1 0 8 . 6 4 . E . F a d l , The Great Theft: Wrestling Islam from the Extremists (New York: Harper Collins, 2005), 203. 65 . On this see Chapter Four. 198 Notes 1 Genealogy of Debates on the Relative Status and the Authenticity of the Various Sources of Legal Authority in the Sunni Islamic Tradition 1 . C . A b r a h a m o v , Islamic Theology: Traditionalism and Rationalism (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1998), vii. 2 . I. Abu Rabi’i, Intellectual Origins of Islamic Resurgence in the Arab World , (New York: SUNY Press, 1996), 42. 3 . M. H, Kamali, “Methodological Issues in Islamic Jurisprudence,” Arab Law Quarterly 11, no. 1 (1996): 3–33. 4 . A. Ahmad, “The Structural Interrelations of Theory and Practice in Islamic Law : A Study of Takhrij al-Furu ala al-Usul Literature” (PhD. Study, Harvard University, 2005), 31. 5 . W . H a l l a q , A History of Islamic Legal Theories (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1997), 82–206. 6 . Few Muslim groups, such as the nineteenth and twentieth century Ahl-i- Qur’an groups in the subcontinent or proponents of the contemporary Qur’an alone, have rejected the concept of Sunna as being normative because of their rejection of hadith. In their minds these two concepts, as according to the classical Islamic scholarship, were conceptually the same, hence, the rejection of the concept of Sunna as a source of Islamic Law. See D. Brown, Rethinking Tradition in Modern Islamic Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 38–39. More on these movements in the main text below. 7 . Y. Wahyudi, “The Slogan “Back to the Qur’an and Sunna”—A Comparative Study of the Responses of Hasan Hanafi, Muhammad Abid Al-Jabiri and Nurcholish Madjid” (Ph.D.