Wael B. Hallaq

Begins with a Map of Al-Rub Al-Khali {Arabia}, circa 622 AD. Curiously, the Map depicts "Markets", distinguishing the Jewish and Christian concentrations along the Trade routes.

First sentence is "One of the fundamental features of the so-called modern Islamic resurgence is the call to restore the Shari'a, the religious law of Islam."

The last sentence is "The rise of modern dictatorships in the wake of the colonial experiences of the Muslim world is merely one tragic result of the process in which modernity wreaked violence on venerated traditional cultures."

Law is a cornerstone "in the reaffirmation of Islamic identity". The author does not seem perplexed by the irony -- a modern resurgence of religious law, a revenant claim of uniqueness behind a thrust for global dominance. Further, the author asserts that "even though the formative and modern periods" are two of the "most studied epochs", somehow they "remain comparatively unexplored". Perhaps this reflects the experience which scholars discover as they search for the Origins of Islamic Law--it disappears before it gets to 622. In the author's own words: "The quality of the sources from the first centuries of Islam is historiographically problematic." In my words, it is mythic.

The author notes that we now know that Joseph Schacht's findings have to be incorrect, and the all-important legal schools as "personal juristic entities" did not come into existence for another century--around the middle of the 10th century. [2]… (altro)

Although I've read a couple of articles by Hallaq, this is the first book of his that I've tackled. In part this was because his style seemed a bit daunting, but mostly it was because his books were checked out from the library more often than those of other authors on Islamic law. He is really at the top of his field, and everyone knows it. I had to wait until I was so motivated to read him that I was willing to do battle with other readers for the privilege.

Given the density and precision of the material, I was surprised by how smoothly it read. Hallaq is a clear writer and, unlike many other English-speaking scholars in the field, he writes like a law professor. Many of his peers are historians and religious-studies scholars who wield a confusing array of foreign terms in order to avoid creating false equivalences with Western concepts. Hallaq is sensitive to that concern - for instance, he rejects "analogy" as an appropriate translation of qiyas, arguing that the latter has a much wider scope - but when a concept can be fairly represented in English, he does so. This results in work that would be perfectly comprehensible to law students without a background in Islamic studies.

Although the final section on modern legal developments meshes awkwardly with the rest of the book, I was impressed that Hallaq not only describes these legal theories but also engages in a substantive critique of them. He also demonstrates a thorough familiarity with contemporary Arabic secondary sources, which in my experience is quite rare among Western scholars. This book is a bit exhausting, but it is a work of great scholarship and highly recommended to those with an interest in Islamic law.… (altro)