Is there a way to think about contemporary life with knowledge that is neither modern nor Western? Rather than confining Islam to a “religion” and shari a to its “law,” Youssef Belal provocatively argues that Islamic shari a is a mode of knowledge with its own concepts and scholarly categories through which the world and the self are grasped. The Life of Shari?a considers two intertwined lineages: how Islamic scholars have formulated knowledge from the classical period to today and how Westerners have understood the law and its origins. By melding these two traditions, Belal puts the formation of modern law under a new light and offers, through a compelling conceptualization of shari a, a powerful argument for its continued relevance to the life of contemporary Muslims.
Contents
Preface and Acknowledgments
Note on Translation and Transliteration
Introduction
Part One. Politics
1. Jurisprudence of the Revolution
2. Law, Power, and Sharias Incompleteness
Part Two. Spirituality
3. Spiritual Ethics and the Unseen World
4. The Spiritual Topography of the Self in Classical Islam
5. Truth of the Law, Truth of the Self, and Dis-embodiment
Part Three. Jurisprudence
6. Worship, Social Interactions, and Sharias Displacement
7. Islamic Legal Knowledge and the New Real
Part Four. Episteme
8. Kalm and the Islamic Episteme
9. Revealed Speech and the Sources of Jurisprudence
Part Five. Genealogy
10. Canon Law and the Christian Self
11. The Law of Conversion
12. Inner Self, Collective Self, and the Law of the Universal
Part Six. Reason
13. Modernist Reason and Sharia
14. Law and the Shaping of the Self in Contemporary Europe
15. Islamic Reason
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Youssef Belal is an anthropologist and political theorist. He is also a UN diplomat and peace mediator who served as political director of UN missions in the Middle East, Central Asia, and the Horn of Africa. He has taught at Columbia University and the University of California, Berkeley, and was named a member of Princetons Institute for Advanced Study in 2016. He is author of Le cheikh et le calife: Sociologie religieuse de lIslam politique au Maroc (The sheikh and the caliph: Religious sociology of political Islam in Morocco).
