Comparing Islamic and international laws of war: orthodoxy, “heresy,” and secularization in the category of civilians

This Article investigates how contemporary laws of war rationalize civilian deaths. I concentrate on two specific legal constructions in warfare: the definition of civilian/combatant and the principle of distinction. (The categories of civilian and combatant should be understood as dialogically constitutive and not entirely distinct. In addition, the category of “civilian” is a modern one and premodern legal sources often do not use one term to refer to noncombatants.) I focus on two significant parties in contemporary warfare: al-Qāʿidah (aka Al-Qaeda) and the U.S. military. Al-Qāʿidah diverges from orthodox Islamic law on these two legal issues, while remaining within the Islamic legal tradition. To scrutinize the nature of this divergence, I compare al-Qāʿidah’s legal reasoning to the legal reasoning of the U.S. military. I demonstrate that the U.S. military diverges from orthodox international law in ways that parallel how al-Qāʿidah diverges from orthodox Islamic law. Specifically, both the U.S. military and al-Qāʿidah elide orthodox categories of civilians and expand the category of combatant, primarily by rendering civilians as probable combatants. Based on this comparative analysis, I argue that the legal reasoning of al-Qāʿidah (and other militant Islamist groups) is as secular as it is Islamic; I call this fusion secularislamized law

Decolonial translation: destabilizing coloniality in secular translations of Islamic law

Contemporary Islamic legal studies - both inside and outside the Muslim world - commonly relies upon a secular distortion of law. In this article, I use translation as a metonym for secular transformations and, accordingly, I will demonstrate how secular ideology translates the Islamic tradition. A secular translation converts the Islamic tradition into “religion” (the non-secular) and Islamic law into “sharia” - a term intended to represent the English mispronunciation of the Arabic word (sharī'ah). I explore the differences between historical Islamic terms and secular terms in order to demonstrate that coloniality generates religion and religious law; in turn, these two notions convert (sharī'ah) into “sharia” in both Arabic and non-Arabic languages. Consequently, the notion of “sharia” is part of a colonial system of meaning

Decolonial comparative law: a conceptual beginning: Dekoloniale Rechtsvergleichung: Ein konzeptioneller Anfang

This article introduces the intellectual motivations behind the establishment of the Decolonial Comparative Law research project. Beginning with an overview of the discipline of comparative law, we identify several methodological impasses that have not been resolved by previous critical approaches. We then introduce decolonial theory, generally, and decolonial legal studies, specifically, and argue for a decolonial approach to comparative law. We explain that decoloniality’s emphasis on delinking from coloniality and on recognizing pluriversality can improve on some problematic and embedded assumptions in mainstream comparative law. We also provide an outline of a conceptual beginning for decolonial approaches to comparative law. Dekoloniale Rechtsvergleichung: Ein konzeptioneller Anfang. – In diesem Beitrag werden die intellektuellen Beweggründe hinter dem Forschungsprojekt „Dekoloniale Rechtsvergleichung“ vorgestellt. Wir beginnen mit einem Überblick über die Disziplin der Rechtsvergleichung und zeigen mehrere methodologische Sackgassen auf, die frühere kritische Ansätze nicht vermeiden konnten. Anschließend stellen wir die dekoloniale Theorie und existierende dekoloniale juristische Analysen vor und plädieren darauf aufbauend für einen dekolonialen Ansatz in der Rechtsvergleichung. Unser Argument ist, dass durch eine Abkopplung von der Kolonialität und eine Anerkennung von Pluriversalität, beides Kernpunkte der Dekolonialitätstheorie, einige problematische Annahmen korrigiert werden können, die bisher mit dem Mainstream der Rechtsvergleichung verbunden sind. Wir skizzieren auch einen konzeptionellen Anfang für dekoloniale Ansätze in der Rechtsvergleichung

Symposium: Can intellectual history be done otherwise?

Using Shahzad Bashir’s open-access publication A New Vision for Islamic Pasts and Futures as a baseline, this symposium debates whether and how intellectual history can be done otherwise. Mohamed ‘Arafa follows Bashir’s invitation to explore the potential of open-ended historiographies when he thinks about the viability of a flexible method to interpret Sharī͑a. Nader El-Bizri interrogates whether the assemblage of personal experiential accounts offered by Bashir can be framed within the discourse of intellectual history at all. Nauman Faizi reads Bashir’s approach as a radical attempt to open up hermeneutical possibilities. Lena Salaymeh suggests that modern aesthetics can contribute to neo-colonial distortions of the Islamic tradition, rather than offering alternatives to positivist historiography. Bashir proposes in his response that academics adopt generosity as an analytical gesture in their academic writing, a generosity that would enable different ways of being human in the world

“Comparing” Jewish and Islamic Legal Traditions: Between Disciplinarity and Critical Historical Jurisprudence

Common modes of comparing Jewish and Islamic legal traditions are limited by deep structural assumptions that may be traced to three comparative disciplines that emerged in post-Enlightenment Europe. Comparative philology, comparative religion, and comparative law emphasized linearity and genealogy, with prejudicial and essentializing implications. This article examines how certain disciplinary methods continue to shape the underlying conceptual assumptions of Judeo-Islamic studies through a case study on circumcision, a practice shared by Jews and Muslims. When late antique circumcision is situated within its socio-political, geographic, and intellectual contexts and when it is defined in relation to its correlative terms and concepts, it becomes clear that Jews and Muslims understood and practiced circumcision in distinct ways. These heuristics of critical historical jurisprudence clarify the non-linear and overlapping relationship between Jewish and Islamic legal traditions. The implication of critical historical jurisprudence for contemporary controversies surrounding circumcision is recognizing the inadequacy and limiting consequences of modern categories and concepts

Le droit divin et les lois divines II

Au cours de cette année (2021-2022), nous avons continué l’étude des versets qur’āniques ayant trait aux trois catégories taxinomiques que sont les Écritures (al-tawrāah, al-zabūr, al-inǧīl, al-ṣuḥuf al-ūlá), les Messagers (al-rusul, i.e. les apôtres de Dieu), et les peuples ayant reçu ou se réclamant des mêmes Messagers (par exemple al-yahūd, al-naṣārá, al-ṣābiʾūn, al-majūs). Nous nous sommes concentrés sur l’exégèse d’al-Ṭabarī (m. 310 h). En outre, nous avons lu des études sur la catégorie de la « tradition » et nous nous sommes engagés dans la théorie critique (spécifiquement, des critiques du sécularisme et de la catégorie de religion)

Late antique and medieval Islamic legal histories: contextual changes and comparative (re)considerations

This dissertation demonstrates the contingent and contextual nuances of Islamic legal history by balancing precise legal case studies with broad-spectrum jurisprudential surveys. This work places Islamic legal history within diverse late antique (seventh to tenth centuries CE) and medieval (tenth to fifteenth centuries CE) contexts through specific comparisons with rabbinic legal traditions. By delineating intricate legal changes involving several generations of jurists, my research demonstrates the flexibility, expansiveness, and contingency of Islamic legal traditions within a meta-narrative about the transformations of law in the "Near East." I offer a historical understanding of the ambiguous and mutable nature of law and illustrate the complexity of legal pluralism and the struggle for legal-politcal authority that underlies the formation of orthodoxy. This research challenges common reifications of "Islamic law" as an inevitable outcome or a static, monolithic whole