Observing and participating in Muslim conversations on Islamic law through a decolonial lens led me to see that debate as misplaced and reflective of a colonial obsession with ontology as the site of truth, whether in symbol or in social practice. That is, the debate assumes Islamic law “is” something that can be located either within cultural symbols or in a mode of cultural practice. But I did not find that same obsession with ontology in the conversations I was following. The driving concern in those discussions—rarely, if ever, expressed—is: how does one do Islamic law? And the answers to that question have very little to do with either textual records or observed practice. Rather, the virtue of Islamic law for a segment of believers I call fiqh-minded is found in making rhetorical arguments within an ancestral tradition that is both internally consistent and contextually relevant, whether or not that argument is found in either ancient texts or lived practice. In this framework, Islamic law functions through a salvific language that expresses the speaker’s ideas about ideal human activity, and speaking that language is itself the value. For fiqh-minded Muslims, the value of Islamic law and legal arguments is neither in the ontological referent of a legal proposition nor in the phenomenological, but in the rhetorical formation of an argument rooted in a historical tradition that provides meaning for contemporary believers.
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Call for Applications | IRCPL Postdoctoral Research Scholar
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The Editors
The Institute for Religion, Culture, and Public Life at Columbia University invites applications for postdoctoral research scholars for a period of three academic years beginning on September 1, 2018. The Institute plans to make two appointments (pending funding), with one position focused on Africa and the other on South Asia. The yearly renewal of the position(s) is contingent upon funding and performance. The postdoctoral research scholar(s) will actively participate in the intellectual development and program activities related to the project "Rethinking Public Religion in Africa and South Asia." The project envisions a partnership between IRCPL, the Institute for African Studies, and the South Asia Institute for research, programming, and coursework on the changing dynamics of interactions among religious communities in the modern world, considering the ways in which religion becomes public through diverse forms of encounter, with a focus on inter-regional differences and flows across South Asia and Africa.
Remembering Saba Mahmood
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The Editors
On March 10, 2018, University of California-Berkeley anthropologist Saba Mahmood died from pancreatic cancer at the age of 56. Mahmood, a former member of the editorial board of The Immanent Frame and longtime contributor, was a prominent scholar in the study of secularism, feminist theory, ethics, and the politics of religious freedom. Her first book, Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject won the Victoria Schuck Award from the American Political Science Association. ... Saba Mahmood changed the course of scholarship on religion and secularism. The editors of TIF, the editorial board, and TIF’s many contributors are grateful for her ground-breaking work, and saddened by this tremendous loss to us all as an intellectual community.