Comments on: What we talk about when we talk about shari‘a http://www.ssrc.org/blogs/immanent_frame/2008/04/01/what-we-talk-about-when-we-talk-about-sharia/ Secularism, religion, and the public sphere Mon, 06 Oct 2008 14:21:48 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.5.1 By: Said Arjomand http://www.ssrc.org/blogs/immanent_frame/2008/04/01/what-we-talk-about-when-we-talk-about-sharia/#comment-1720 Said Arjomand Wed, 09 Apr 2008 17:03:02 +0000 http://www.ssrc.org/blogs/immanent_frame/2008/04/01/what-we-talk-about-when-we-talk-about-shari%e2%80%98a/#comment-1720 Professor Feldman addresses my mainly rhetorical point, and I am reassured that his attitude is “the very opposite of ‘paternalism of the failed American empire.’ It is rather an argument against the paternalistic view that it is up to the West to tell Muslim countries that they must adopt our secularisms—a view embraced by the strange bedfellows of neoconservatism and internationalist secularism." Furthermore, I would go along with this rejection of unreconstructed secularism. The point about Orientalism was also rhetorical but not entirely so. What I had in mind was the assumption that his brief account of the checks and balances in Islamic constitutional history implied an essential Islamic model for the Muslims to restore once they would stop aping the Westerners. And the empirical evidence that can be set against such abstraction comes not just from Iran but also from Nigeria, the Sudan, Pakistan and elsewhere. My main substantive concern remains unaddressed, however. It has to do with the lack of accuracy and confusion of categories---something one would not expect from a law professor. Yes, the Kemalists were and are secularists, but the jurists who codified the famous Civil Codes of Iran and Egypt were not. They certainly were not Islamists or Islamic ideologues. But in no way could they be considered secularists. On the contrary, they incorporated major substantive norms of the Shari`a into the Civil Codes to rationalize Islamic law (especially its procedure), and without the hullaballou of the Islamic ideology. What we talk about when we talk about 'the Islamic state'---the core concept of Islamism or political Islam---should not include Afghanistan or Iraq, whose recent constitutions merely repeat variants of the staple so-called "repugnancy" clause---i.e., non-contradiction of legislation and the Shari`a. Professor Feldman addresses my mainly rhetorical point, and I am reassured that his attitude is “the very opposite of ‘paternalism of the failed American empire.’ It is rather an argument against the paternalistic view that it is up to the West to tell Muslim countries that they must adopt our secularisms—a view embraced by the strange bedfellows of neoconservatism and internationalist secularism.” Furthermore, I would go along with this rejection of unreconstructed secularism. The point about Orientalism was also rhetorical but not entirely so. What I had in mind was the assumption that his brief account of the checks and balances in Islamic constitutional history implied an essential Islamic model for the Muslims to restore once they would stop aping the Westerners. And the empirical evidence that can be set against such abstraction comes not just from Iran but also from Nigeria, the Sudan, Pakistan and elsewhere.

My main substantive concern remains unaddressed, however. It has to do with the lack of accuracy and confusion of categories—something one would not expect from a law professor. Yes, the Kemalists were and are secularists, but the jurists who codified the famous Civil Codes of Iran and Egypt were not. They certainly were not Islamists or Islamic ideologues. But in no way could they be considered secularists. On the contrary, they incorporated major substantive norms of the Shari`a into the Civil Codes to rationalize Islamic law (especially its procedure), and without the hullaballou of the Islamic ideology. What we talk about when we talk about ‘the Islamic state’—the core concept of Islamism or political Islam—should not include Afghanistan or Iraq, whose recent constitutions merely repeat variants of the staple so-called “repugnancy” clause—i.e., non-contradiction of legislation and the Shari`a.

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