Report
Teaser, summary, work performed and final results
Periodic Reporting for period 2 - LAWALISI (Law, Authority and Learning in Imami Shi\'ite Islam)
Teaser
The Law, Authority and Learning in Imami Shiite Islam project (LAWALISI) aims to reformulate, in a fundamental way, current academic research on Islamic law and its institutions. Understanding the intellectual structure and the operation of the Islamic legal system has emerged...
Summary
The Law, Authority and Learning in Imami Shiite Islam project (LAWALISI) aims to reformulate, in a fundamental way, current academic research on Islamic law and its institutions. Understanding the intellectual structure and the operation of the Islamic legal system has emerged as a major research focus in the 20th and 21st centuries. Muslim movements usually include a call for a restoration of the SharÄ«Ê¿a as a key element of their programme of political and religious change, revealing how central this idea is to Muslim identity and belief through history. Much research to date focuses solely on Sunni Muslim legal developments. The project will challenge this general tendency in the field by producing a series of advanced research publications in which the contribution of one non-Sunni tradition of legal thought, ShiÊ¿ite jurisprudence (specifically ImÄmÄ« or Twelver ShÄ«Ê¿Ä« jurisprudence), is integrated into the general account of the development of Islamic legal thought.
The major contribution to society involves a deeper understanding of Islamic law, which is associated with terms such as Sharia. This term is used widely and inaccurately in the media and in popular discourse. One of the results of the project will be to change the way in which Sharia is talked about by complicating the term. Many think it is simple - in fact Islamic law is extremely complex and varied. Many think it is monolithic - in fact, as the study of Imami law will demonstrate, it is diverse and multiple.
In the project, we aim to examine the theories and methods used by scholars in the study of Islamic law, derived mainly from Sunni sources, and test them against the Shi’ite legal literature. The project aims to demonstrate that a non-Sunni tradition of Islamic legal thought, in this case Imami Shi’i law, can illuminate and enrich the general history of Islamic law. At times, Shi\'ite law shares features with other legal schools; at other times it provides an alternative account, challenging long held assumptions concerning Islam’s legal development. One of the project’s primary objectives is to demonstrate that scholarship on Islamic law would be significantly enriched by greater scholarly recognition of the contribution of non-Sunni legal traditions to the formation, history and development of Islamic legal thought. By demonstrating the contribution made by the ShÄ«Ê¿Ä« jurists (particularly those of the ImÄmÄ« (Twelver) ShÄ«Ê¿Ä« school) to the development of Islamic legal scholarship, the project aims to have a lasting effect on the academic study of the Muslim legal tradition. in particular, the project aims to examine the specific areas of:
(i) ideas concerning the formation of the Islamic legal schools
(ii) the relationship between legal theory and legal doctrine
(iii) the purpose of the legal commentary and the phenomenon of legal change,
(iv) the role of legal curriculum and educational institution in securing legal doctrine,
(v) the relationship between jurisprudence and governance/politics in the Muslim world.
In each of these areas, the scholarship to date has been dominated by Sunni sources - this project will adjust this, and aims to ensure that in future research, a wider range of sources is used by researchers.
Work performed
\"In the project to date, the focus has been on three major research themes:
1. The ImÄmÄ« School: Origins, Role and Prospects, examining the process and institutionalization of ImÄmÄ« ShÄ«Ê¿Ä« madhhab formation and how this informs our understanding of legal school formation in Islamic history more generally.
2. Legal Theory/Legal Doctrine examining the appearance and development of legal theory and its relationship to the production of legal norms, and how the ImÄmÄ« literature of uṣūl al-fiqh provides a particular perspective on this much debated scholarly issue.
3. Fatwas and Fiqh focussing on the development of a body of legal doctrine (fiqh, also expressed in fatwÄs), and carrying out a comparative analysis of how commentaries on legal texts functioned to form a legal tradition and facilitate doctrinal change.
these are technical and specific areas of the study of Islamic law - and which remain on the whole unanswered. Therefore the \"\"state of the art\"\" at present is only to use Sunni materials to answer the questions concerning school formation, theory and doctrine relationships and how fatwas are given and how they are received. Our work in the project has moved beyond this through:
1. Outputs. The following articles are attempting to shift the focus of Islamic legal studies:
R. Gleave, Muhammad Taqi al-Majlisi and Safavid Shi‘Ism: Akhbarism and Anti-sunni Polemic During the Reigns of Shah ‘Abbas the Great and Shah Safi. Iran: Journal of the British Institute of Persian Studies, 55.1, 24-24
The Rebel and the Imam: the Uprising of Zayd al-Nar and Shi\'i Leadership Claims. In Tor D (Ed) The Ê¿Abbasid and Carolingian Empires Comparative Studies in Civilizational Formation, Leiden and New York: BRILL, 169-190
R. Gleave, Imami Shi‘I Legal Theory: From its Origins to the Early-Twentieth Century The Oxford Handbook of Islamic Law Edited by Anver M. Emon and Rumee Ahmed (Oxford, 208)
2. Seminars and workshops:
The project holds 2-monthly workshops in which scholars of Sunni and Shii law gather together to read each others sources and formulate legal arguments. Full details are at:
http://www.lawalisi.eu/workshops/
3. Dissemination: The project team has been involved in numerous presentations which promote the perspective and methodological achievements of the project, including:
7th – 9th December 2017 ShÄ«Ê¿Ä« Studies: The State of the Art conference, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. Rob Gleave, Project Director, gave a paper at the conference (“Early ShÄ«Ê¿Ä« law: Limitations and Possibilities of Current Scholarshipâ€).22nd – 23rd February 2019: Prophetic Traditions Materialized: Dimensions of ḤadÄ«th Manuscripts
2nd March 2018: Craft of Teaching Seminar, University of Chicago: Rob Gleave gave a talk titled “Studying Uncertainty: contemporary Shi’i jurisprudence and the teaching of Shi’ism in the Western Academyâ€
13th March 2018: Lecture “Shi’ite Law: Early Development and Later Elaborationâ€. Rob Gleave gave this lecture in the Seminar “Droit musulman et sociétés islamiques prémodernes (VIIIe–XIXe siècles)â€
28th March 2018: Lecture on “The rejection of QiyÄs in ShÄ«Ê¿Ä« law†Rob Gleave gave this lecture titled as part of the Seminar La logique aristotélicienne et usul al fiqh: Le cas de qiyas at the
Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, Université de Strasbourg.
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Final results
The project has made progress in shifting the paradigm of Islamic legal studies beyond the state of the art in a number of ways:
1. Usually the study of early Islamic law is silo-ed - with particular schools - mainly in the Sunni environment - compared and contrasted. The project outputs, though, bring in the Shiite material; a series of papers and presentations, which will eventually become articles, in which Imami law.
2. Innovative, mixed, regular 2-monthly workshops in which scholars from different areas of Islamic legal studies present their work and are interrogated by scholars of Imami Shiism, and on the other hand, the Imami Shii finding are discussed with scholars of non-Shii studies. The format of the workshops is innovative in that they involved close reading of (mainly) Arabic texts together and in discussion.
Further progress will be made in specific areas in the second half of the project, specifically in the distinctive and universal elements of Islamic legal theory, and the fertilisation of themes and ideas between schools.
Website & more info
More info: http://www.lawalisi.eu.