Before the Eternal: Muslim Law and the Eternity of Divine Speech
In: Islamic Law and SocietyThis essay examines the interconnections between the theological controversy around the eternity of the Qurʾān and the legal theory debate on the normative categorization of human actions before the advent of divine revelation (ḥukm al-ashyāʾ qabla wurūd al-sharʿ). Prior to the sixth/twelfth century, legal theoreticians and theologians rarely connected the two debates. Early in this century, they started to argue that a scholar’s position on the ‘eternity of divine speech’ should inform his position on the ‘before revelation’ question. I trace the changing relationship between the two debates and use my examination to better understand the nature of the relationship between speculative theology and legal theory.
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8
Aron Zysow, “Muʿtazilism and Māturidism in Ḥanafī Legal Theory,” in Studies in Islamic Legal Theory, ed. Bernard G. Weiss (Leiden: Brill, 2002): 235-65.
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9
Lange, Justice, 187-9. Muqaddarāt are non-rational elements in law (fiqh) often related to ritual. Their non-rational character stems from the fact that the reason behind performing (or obligating) most of these elements according to a particular pattern cannot be discerned by human reason alone. For example, Muslim jurists often note that believers cannot rationally know why it is obligatory to annually pay 2.5% (and not 3.5%, for instance) as alms (zakāt) on the total amount of capital owned by a Muslim for a year, why Muslims are required to perform five daily prayers and not four or six, why the punishment for extra-marital intercourse of an unmarried person is one hundred lashes and not any other number. Excluding the Ḥanafīs, all other schools of law accept legal analogy (qiyās)as a method to extend many of the muqaddarāt mentioned in the Qurʾān and the Sunna to cases not covered by either source. For example, apart from Ḥanafīs, jurists often extend, by legal analogy, the punishment for extra-marital intercourse to cover cases of homosexual intercourse. The debate on the applicability of legal analogy to the muqaddarāt was particularly strong between Ḥanafīs and Shāfiʿīs.
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Ahmed El Shamsy, “The Wisdom of God’s Law: Two Theories,” in Islamic Law in Theory, ed. A. Kevin Reinhart and Robert Gleave (Leiden: Brill, 2014): 19-38.
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25
Al-Asnawī, Nihāyat al-sūl, 1:287; al-Zarkashī, Tashnīf al-masāmiʿ, 1:108.
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Before the Eternal: Muslim Law and the Eternity of Divine Speech
In: Islamic Law and SocietyThis essay examines the interconnections between the theological controversy around the eternity of the Qurʾān and the legal theory debate on the normative categorization of human actions before the advent of divine revelation (ḥukm al-ashyāʾ qabla wurūd al-sharʿ). Prior to the sixth/twelfth century, legal theoreticians and theologians rarely connected the two debates. Early in this century, they started to argue that a scholar’s position on the ‘eternity of divine speech’ should inform his position on the ‘before revelation’ question. I trace the changing relationship between the two debates and use my examination to better understand the nature of the relationship between speculative theology and legal theory.
| All Time | Past Year | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 166 | 37 | 2 |
| Full Text Views | 60 | 4 | 0 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 45 | 13 | 0 |