The Making of the Modern Muslim State: Islam and Governance in the Middle East and North Africa, written by Malika Zeghal

Islamic Law and Society · 2025-08-21

157The American Problem: Between <i>Sharīʿa</i> , Politics and Culture

2025-07-04

Conclusion

2024-03-21

The Islamic Secular (2017)*

American Journal of Islam and Society · 2024-02-05

It is common to assume an inherent conflict between the substanceof the category “religion” and the category “secular.” Givenits putative rejection of the separation between the sacred andthe profane, this conflict is presumed to be all the more solid inIslam. But even assuming Islam’s rejection of the sacred/profanedichotomy, there may be other ways of defining the secular inIslam and of thinking about its relationship with the religion.This is what the present essay sets out to do. By taking Sharia asits point of departure, it looks at the latter’s self-imposed limitsas the boundary between a mode of assessing human acts thatis grounded in concrete revelational sources (and/or their extension)and modes of assessing human acts that are independent ofsuch sources, yet not necessarily outside God’s adjudicative gaze.This non-shar`ī realm, it is argued, is the realm of the “Islamic secular.”It is “secular” inasmuch as it is differentiated from Sharia asthe basis for assessing human acts. It remains “Islamic,” however,and thus “religious,” in its rejection of the notion of proceeding“as if God did not exist.” As I will show, this distinction betweenthe shar`ī and the nonshar`ī has a long pedigree in the Islamiclegal (and theological) tradition. As such, the notion of the Islamicsecular is more of an excavation than an innovation. *This article was first published in the American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 34, no. 2 (2017): 1-31

The Islamic Secular

2024-03-21 · 24 citations

Abstract This book argues that the common notion of a fundamental conflict between the secular and the religious cannot be applied to Islam. This is not because Islam rejects the secular in favor of the religious; it is because Islam’s concept of the religious includes the secular. This is what is captured by the term “Islamic Secular.” Contrary both to the notion that “religion” in Islam equals “sharī‘ah,” and to the concomitant notion that sharī‘ah is the all-encompassing, exclusive metric of assessment in Islam, this book argues that, while Islam is all-encompassing, sharī‘ah is bounded. This leaves a space between the limited circumference of sharī‘ah and the unlimited circumference of Islam. While both spaces are “religious” in that they come under the adjudicative gaze of the God of Islam, only the shar‘ī space draws directly upon sharī‘ah and its sources, while the non-shar‘ī space does not. In the end, this allows for a “religious secular,” a space wherein matters remain “religious” but their concrete substance is neither based on nor assessed in terms of sharī‘ah or its sources. These shar‘ī and non-shar‘ī elements are not rivals but complements. As such, both “secularism” and “secularization,” as non- or anti-religious tropes, are alien to the Islamic Secular.

Introduction

2024-03-21

Islam, <i>Fiqh</i>, the <i>Ḥukm Shar‘ī</i>, and the Differentiated Realm

2024-03-21

Abstract This chapter establishes that the bounded nature of sharī‘ah is neither a modern innovation nor a restriction imposed upon Islam-cum-sharī‘ah from without. Rather, Muslim jurists have recognized that sharī‘ah’s scope is limited for at least a thousand years. This is through their restricted understanding of the ḥukm shar‘ī (legal ruling) and it differs from assessments that are not based on the sources of sharī‘ah. As sharī‘ah is the sum-total of ḥukm shar‘īs, it can ultimately go no further than the latter will take it. Thus, any restrictions on the ḥukm shar‘ī are restrictions on sharī‘ah. This establishes that sharī‘ah and Islam are not coterminous and that there is “space” between them. This space is that of the realm of the Islamic Secular. The chapter also deals with two potential challenges to my thesis. The first is the “sharī‘ah-minimalism” in the form of the Ẓāhirī movement. The second is the “sharī‘ah-maximalism” of the likes of such influential jurists as Ibn Taymīyah and Ibn al-Qayyim.

The Islamic Secular and Liberal Citizenship

2024-03-21

Abstract This chapter engages with the thesis of Andrew March in his book Islam and Liberal Citizenship: The Search for an Overlapping Consensus. Unlike Hallaq and An-Na’im, March’s primary focus is on Muslims as minorities in the West, especially America. His argument is that, read as he reads it, Islamic juristic doctrine provides ways for accommodating liberal citizenship. I argue that by limiting his discourse to juristic “doctrine,” March overlooks the prudential side of Islam-cum-sharī‘ah, which is what the Islamic Secular addresses. On this omission, I argue, even if March were correct in his argument that it would be “permissible,” according to Islamic law, for Muslims to accept and fully participate in liberal citizenship, this understanding obliterates the material and practical side of Islam-cum-sharī‘ah by ignoring the question of what Muslims actually should or could do, based not on doctrine and questions of permissibility but on the basis of what they identify as their concrete interests as Muslims in the specific context of American socio-political life. I also argue that positioning liberalism as the interlocutor through which Muslims negotiate their relationship with American democracy places them at a marked disadvantage. I end the chapter with an alternative approach for Muslims to negotiate their relationship with American democracy based on the Constitution, a fuller reading of American socio-political reality, including the centrality of race, and a fuller understanding of Islam-cum-sharī‘ah, as something broader and thicker than “ideal theory” as March depicts it.

The Islamic Secular and the Secular State

Oxford University Press eBooks · 2024

• Political Science
• Sociology
• Political Science

Abstract This chapter engages with the thesis of Abdullahi An-Na’im in his book Islam and the Secular State. An-Na’im argues for a secular state because he believes that only it, in contradistinction to the Islamic State, can accommodate human rights, citizenship, and constitutionalism. I argue that by ignoring the Islamic Secular, An-Na’im exaggerates the role of sharī‘ah and from there sees the solution exclusively in the wholesale elimination of sharī‘ah from the state apparatus. This is particularly crucial, according to An-Na’im, given the presence of non-Muslims in Muslim-majority states. In this regard, I argue that An-Na’im imputes the legal monism of the modern state to sharī‘ah, whereas pre-modern jurists, operating on the logic of the “empire state,” recognized that sharī‘ah applied to non-Muslims only in limited ways, where it applied at all. I also argue that so much of what modern states are called upon to regulate or provide falls into the realm of the non-shar‘ī, Islamic Secular. As such, the idea that many of the problems he raises can only be resolved by removing sharī‘ah from the state is simply misplaced. In fact, I argue, many of the problems An-Na’im raises are actually created by this very oversight.

The Islamic Secular and The Impossible State

2024-03-21

Abstract Here I engage with the thesis of Wael Hallaq in his provocative book, The Impossible State. I argue, on the one hand, that Hallaq’s definition of the state, with which he argues that Islam-cum-sharī‘ah is incompatible, could not be successfully applied to any number of non-Islamic states across the globe. As such, even on his criterion, there should be nothing unique about Islam’s alleged incompatibility with the modern state. More importantly, however, I argue that by ignoring the Islamic Secular, Hallaq cannot successfully analyze the relationship between Islam cum-sharī‘ah and the state. For, neither Islam nor Islamic law can be adequately understood in the absence of the Islamic Secular. I engage with Hallaq’s definition of the state, his limiting Islam to morality, and his understanding of the relationship between Islamic law and reason. Ultimately, I argue that the Islamic State would be far less “impossible” were Hallaq to consider the Islamic Secular and rethink other arguments of his that I find to be overstated.