Modern Shi’i Islam and the narrative of social power: The views of Muhammad Husayn Fadlallah

In modern Shi’i Islam, power constitutes a major concern for thinkers and movements alike. Above all, Muham mad Husayn Fadlallah stands as the most systematic Shi’i thinker who produced an Islamic theory of power. The present article analyses Fadlallah’s concept of social power. In Islam and the Logic of Power (al-Islam wa-mantiq al-quwwa), he emphasised the importance of social solidarity, justice, and the obligation of “commanding right and forbidding wrong” as a means to create the ideal society. For him, this social model has are ciprocal relation to social power. Muhammad Husayn Fadlallah tells the tale of two societies: the weak and the strong, arguing that beliefs, unity and values determine the power of a community. He claims that the strong society is best illustrated by the first Islamic community. He confronts it with the weak society which lacks unity and solidarity — echoing to a great extent contemporary Lebanon. Fadlallah’s social theory — embedded in his theology of power — transforms spiritual power into a collective deployment of action. He draws on a wide range of elements (Sunni, Shi’i and Marxist) to create a coherent system of power in which social power is a mediator between the ideology of power and its political manifestation

Legitimacy and exchange : the moral economy of authority among Hungarian muslims

In this chapter, we aim to outline, in the realm of the possible, the parameters of the field of Muslim authority in Hungary. For this purpose, it is appropriate to apply three types of approaches: first a conceptual study which analyses some key concepts (those of authority and legitimacy, in particular) from the perspective of the socio-anthropology of Islam. The next step is a longer exercise of mapping the sources of legitimacy among Hungarian Muslims. We do this second exercise following a back-and-forth movement between Islam in Hungary, Muslim societies and Islamic doctrines, all of which are contributing factors to the structures of authority and modes of legitimating that explain the production and obedience to authority among Hungarian Muslims. A final ethnographic approach describes and analyses debates between Hungarian Muslim women on the authority to decide over questions such as the problematic of legitimate preachers, celebrating birthdays in the family and female beauty care. The aim of the article is to examine the legitimacy of symbolic capital that allows Hungarian Islamic figures to claim the status of the authority and to initiate the production of this authority and to conduct an authorization process. From the outset, therefore, we raise the question of the moral economy1 of authority in Islam in Hungary. We base our study on observations and interviews with members of the two major Hungarian Muslim communities: A Magyarországi Muszlimok Egyháza and Magyar Iszlám Közösség

THE SACRED BODY AND THE FASCINATION OF ORTHOPRAXY : THE RELIGIOUS CORPUS OF HUNGARIAN MUSLIM WOMEN

Nowhere is the crisis of the post-modern subject more evident than in its representations of the body. Post-modernity wavers, anxiously, between em-bodiment and dis-embodiment. It is argued, here, that the orthoprax appeal of Islam to European converts stems from its emphasis on the purification of the individual and collective bodies. Islamic law provides an ethical and legal spring-board, albeit pre-modern, the aim of which is to frame the scattered body and to set its boundaries in time and space. Our data come from the corpus of religious texts (94 documents) produced and distributed by members of the group Iszlám és a nők (“Islam and women”), established by Hungarian Muslim women in Budapest, and uploaded to the documents of the Facebook site of the community. Most of the documents are transcripts or handouts for lectures on various subjects

Conceptualisation of Power in the Thought of Muhammad Husayn Fadlallah

The topic of my research is the Shi'i jurist Muhammad Husayn Fadlallah’s (1935-2010) conception of power, its uses and its functions. Fadlallah was a prominent figure of the Lebanese Shi'i movement and of the Islamic revival as a whole. Specifically, I examine his book al-Islam wa-mantiq al-quwwa (Islam and the Logic of Power, 1976), in which he presents power as a coherent and sophisticated system, and definies the principles that legitimise the aspirations to power and the use of force. Fadlallah defined power as essential in constituting and maintaining the social and political structure through which the message of Islam can be put into practice and the continuity of the call to it guaranteed. The various elements and dimensions of power – spiritual, social, political – are interrelated as they secure the reproduction of quwwa, which in turn sustains the social-political order and the spiritual strength of the community. My contention is that, through his concept of power, Fadlallah reconsidered the political role of modern Shi'ism. The dissertation is divided into nine chapters. In the first chapter, I describe the historical and intellectual context in which Fadlallah expounded his theory of power. The second chapter provides an intellectual biography of the author. The third chapter presents quwwa as a system and its different components. The fourth chapter describes his reinterpretation of the Shi'i creed as a creed of force. The fifth chapter analyses his reinterpretation of the spiritual components of power. In the sixth chapter, I examine the social aspects of empowerment, followed by the seventh chapter dedicated to his conception of political power. The eighth chapter studies Fadlallah’s ethics of power. The final chapter analyses his rhetorical tools and strategies. I have paid special attention to the ways and means by which Fadlallah re-interprets the Shi'i tradition and through them the Islamic principles regarding force and power. For a better understanding of Shi'i revivalist thought, I suggest to read it through a transformative paradigm which allows us to perceive the radical change in Shi'ism from quietism to activism as a multi-faceted and complex process.British Council of Researc

Islamic ecumenism redefined : a Hungarian muslim leader’s "reformed sharia" for everyday muslims and Europe

This paper explores the idea of a reformed sharia and its potential for redefining ecumenism and engagement with everyday Islam in Europe. It builds its argument on interviews conducted with the founder of the Hungarian Muslim community Balázs Mihálffy. He promotes an ambitious reform project of Islamic law, in his 2428-page Quran commentary, and throughout his life trajectory of ecumenism and work on sharia. Mihálffy’s understanding of sharia as a solution to the predicaments of Islam and Europe, which comes at a critical time, is presented and analyzed here in both its resources and limits. We also examine his sharia claim in the current debates of the anthropology of Islam in Europe, the context of Islam in Hungary and the reception of sharia-claims by European lawyers and institutions