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Abstract
The present study is an analysis of a treatise (risāla) by the 18th-century Mālikī al-Tāwudī in which he discusses a doctrinal detail regarding bayʿ al-thunyā, a common stratagem to circumvent the prohibition of interest. I use al-Tāwudī’s text as a lens to reconstruct the hermeneutical perspective of a Muslim jurist of the late premodern era. In the first section, I show that al-Tāwudī’s legal reasoning is strongly informed by the legacy of Mālikī discourse on bayʿ al-thunya, which is one of constant disagreement over the acceptability of the institution. In the course of this conflict, various doctrinal compromises were negotiated, only to be challenged again by the invention of new stratagems or by rigorist backlashes. Al-Tāwudī’s treatise must be understood as part of this doctrinal tug of war.
In the second section, I analyze al-Tāwudī’s epistemological premises. I show that his legal reasoning is strictly exegetical, except that the object of this exegesis is not Qurʾān and Sunna, as proposed in classical uṣūl al-fiqh, but the school’s literary corpus. This corpus, in turn, is hierarchically structured. It consists of many layers of texts, accumulated over centuries and tightly interwoven by intertextual references, with certain texts enjoying a particularly authoritative status. Against this background, reasoning becomes a game of artful referencing. Successful argumentation requires claiming a maximum of authority within the school tradition in support of one’s position.
Abstract
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has created a unique, comprehensive, and flexible legal framework for regulating the ownership and governance of family companies. This article examines how Federal Decree-Law No. 37 of 2022 on family businesses (the Family Business Law) addresses the main challenges faced by these companies. The article begins with an overview of the various definitions of family businesses, followed by a description of the definition adopted by the Family Business Law. The article then explores how the new law helps family businesses navigate the complexities of growth while preserving family control and the family’s long-term vision. The article further discusses the challenges associated with business continuity and analyses how the Family Business Law establishes robust corporate governance measures to support their long-term continuity and facilitate their transfer across generations.
Abstract
Consociationalism is often perceived as a go-to response to ethnicized conflict, a form of ‘political prescription’ proffered by both external mediators and domestic constitutional designers alike. Power-sharing theory posits that extended periods of cross-community cooperation can lessen divisions, allowing the system to give way to more ‘normal’ politics. However, increasing evidence from Lebanon and elsewhere tracks a different set of incentives. Rather than facilitating a virtuous cycle of cooperation and consensus, a more vicious cycle of immobilism, intransigence, and institutional collapse emerges. In Lebanon, this has coincided with a set of intersecting political, economic, and humanitarian crises. This paper outlines how consociationalism’s causal logic has undergone a full reversal in Lebanon, maps the manifestations and implications for the country, and reflects on what power-sharing theory can learn from Lebanon’s consociational experience.
Abstract
This article examines how Lebanon’s power-sharing arrangements, embedded within the politics of sectarianism, entrench “recurring dilemmas” that undermine political change, reform, and accountability. The three dilemmas uncovered in this article include the propensity of Lebanon’s power-sharing system to political deadlock, its institutionalization of impunity, as well as its veritable disconnect from grassroots demands. This article focuses on the case of the Beirut blast and demonstrates how the tragedy represents a microcosm of the convergence of these power-sharing dilemmas. The analysis highlights the limitations of Lebanon’s power-sharing system. It suggests that as long as the current sectarian power-sharing system remains in place, the system’s endemic dilemmas will continue to manifest and preclude meaningful reform, effective policy making and justice.
Abstract
This paper focuses on the political economy of aid to determine its impact on Lebanon’s politics of sectarianism. I approach NGOization as a political process that normalizes a situation where citizens are accustomed to functioning without the state, and as an economic process creating a parallel economy. Both trends have expanded with the current crisis. I posit that politics of sectarianism feeds on NGOization: they allow sectarian elites to outsource aid, manage discontent and depoliticize ngo s and cso s, while silencing potential challenges to their order. Thus, organizations aiming to transform the political system lack visibility and leverage, while their space of operation has been shrinking. I also explore the role of international aid on the continuity and durability of the Lebanese state and its neo-patrimonial and clientelist governance mode. NGOization is further reinforced by the fact that national ngo s have been co-opted by foreign donors, which has the effect of depoliticizing their discourse and action.
Abstract
This article places the Thawra within recent waves of protest politics in so-called divided societies, particularly the Plenum (Bosnia 2014) and Tishreen (Iraq 2019) protests. It examines the thematic connections between protest waves in relation to contesting consociational power-sharing governance, which has been deployed in Lebanon, Iraq, and Bosnia in the aftermath of civil war or political violence. While protests have addressed a range of issues – corruption, weak and failing public services, and rising unemployment levels – these various strands have been successfully distilled into powerful critiques of the ethnosectarian elites who perpetuate polarization and of the system itself. Towards this, I identify three significant frames developed by protestors in relation to power-sharing: The “People” versus the “Elites”, Trans-sectarian Belonging, and Participatory Citizenship.
Abstract
To what extent is power-sharing theory, used as one of the key conceptual frameworks for Lebanon’s political system, still relevant for charting a way forward amid the country’s cumulative crises? This article heeds the call to position research on Lebanon’s power-sharing in a pluralist research agenda that speaks to a wider knowledge base and to a broader set of everyday policy problems. This agenda articulates itself around three axes: first, building on interdisciplinary research perspectives; second, looking at post-war Lebanon through multi-level and relational perspectives beyond the focus on power-sharing theory and “deeply divided societies” as focal paradigms for exploring conflict mitigation; and third, feeding into critical policy perspectives that probe people’s everyday struggles.
Abstract
Diasporas are often viewed as mirrors for their homeland’s politics. The Lebanese diaspora’s involvement in the 2019 Thawra, however, established the diaspora as a locus for autonomous and disruptive political action. Through an analysis of the spatialities of protest, this paper analyses the diaspora’s involvement in the Thawra, its implications for the protest movement, and for the diaspora itself. It argues that diaspora protests gave rise to new tactics and protest repertoires. These mirrored protest activity on the ground, supported protestors in Lebanon, and constituted the diaspora as a locus for contestation and claims-making. Moreover, the diaspora’s mobilization in the Thawra contributed to the consolidation of diasporic identity and the construction of alternative societal imaginaries and conceptions of citizenship that challenge Lebanon’s state-centric and sectarian citizenship regime. This paper thus makes the case for reassessing the autonomous political role of diasporas to gain a fuller understanding of transnational protest dynamics, solidarities, and citizenship beyond the boundaries of the nation-state.
Abstract
This paper captures women’s religious agency and their bonding with the mosque by taking a snapshot of the discourse and experiences of female preachers, appointed by the Egyptian Ministry of Endowments, who were confronted with the closure of mosques within the outbreak of the covid-19 pandemic. Though these female preachers have managed to perform their preaching roles while being detached from the mosque, their spiritual affinity to the mosque could not escape notice. This paper argues that the detachment of the female preachers from the mosque due to covid-19 offers a novel conceptualization of ‘religious’ agency that could be partially ascribed to their attachment to the mosque, not as a locale for their ‘official’ or ‘semi-official’ affiliation with the state, but as a ‘sacred’ extension of the private space of the home.