Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.
Immanuel Kant, Metaphysics of Morals
Pat Lang gave a lecture on Islam at St. Mary’s University in San Antonio. The talk expands on an article of his in the Catholic magazine One.
He explains the role of Islamic law and how the various sects within Islam split and develop(ed). Such splits can and do occur for political reasons. But all splits inevitably get justified by varying methods of interpretating Islamic law.
Now what’s that? Here is the basic starting point:
[The Islamic faith] envisions human existence as a "seamless garment," in which all the aspects of life are united and viewed through the prism of submission to the will of God. Business, family life, inheritance, personal status, politics and war are all seen as governed by the same attitudes and laws.
In Islam the submission to the will of god requires of course to follow his devine law, Sharia. But just like any ancient and modern basic law original Sharia is insufficient formulated and open to interpretation.
In early Islam a science of law interpretation developed and as there is no hierarchy or clergy within Islam, the learned and acknowledged scholars of law became central figures of society.
In Muslim belief, the basic ethic, moral and social rules were given by the Abrahamic monotheistic God to Muhammad who wrote them down in a scripture known as quran.
But the rules in the quran don’t cover many practical aspects of life. To find regulations and law for such, early scholars studied and documented how Muhammad and his primary followers had lived their lives. These stories of the "practice of the prophet," the hadith, are the second written source of Islamic law.
For cases not covered by the "case law" of quran and hadith, law scholars applied classic (Greek) logical thought within the realm of the law laid down in the basic sources. They thereby created new (case-)law for issues not covered by the old one. These innovations allowed to adopt the religious law to changing times. This process is known as ijtihad.
Some saw such ever expanding innovations as deviation from the original scripture. About one thousand years ago scholaric consensus emerged to close the gate of ijtihad.
Instead of original creation of new law through the study of scripture and applied logic, people now have to rely on the less capable tool of analogies, qiyas. For a current case in question a somehow resembling one has to be found in the basic scripture. Then an analog remedy can be applied.
As there are no hierarchies or clergy in Islam, consensus, ijma’, is required to apply the law layed down in quran, hadith and as interpreted through ijtihad or qiyas. A group of people expresses ijma’ simply by following a specific scholar’s or school-of-law’s interpretation.
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There are quran and hadith as basic scripture and itihad and qiyas as methods to interprete these. Ijam’ is needed to agree on any interpretation.
The ever occurring splits (and joins) between various groups and subgroups of Islam can be explained in their relation to law.
The difference between Sunni and Shia, aside from the folkloric tales and rituals, is in the way of interpretation of the basic law.
For Sunni the door to ijtihad, the creation of new law based on innovative logic derivation from scripture was closed long ago.
In Arabic, says Lang, the words for "innovation" and "heresy" are the same. This makes it difficult and even dangerous to develop new technical, scientific or philosophical concepts. The downturn in the great medieval Arabic science may well be related to its contemporary rejection of ijtihad.
In Shia belief and law interpretation, ijtihad, the process of innovation, is still alive and is authoritative practiced by the peer-acknowledged top legal/philosophical Shia scholars, the Ajatollahs.
Lang says there are discussions within today’s general Sunni scholarship to reopen ijtihad because the restricted system of only analog interpretation of old scripture is more and more seen as a significant limit to any effort to adjust to a fast developing world.
(Possible ethical conflicts of embryonic gene manipulation, for whatever means, were most likely not anticipated in the original torah, gospels or quran.)
There are also Islamic groups who reject any interpretation of scripture. They rely only on the written law, quran and hadith and there literal meaning. Conservative Saudi Wahabbi, some Salafists and Taliban are to various degrees such believers.
A group of Muslim following some wingnut scholar may declare by pure internal consensus
his/its interpretation of Islamic law the only "real" one. Followers of
other interpretations of Islamic law can then be seen as heretics who’s suppression,
punishment or even death is justified as they are no longer Muslim
brethren.
Such radicals can be found in all major religions. Literal interpretation of the bible is certainly a hallmark of some radical U.S. Christian evangelicals. The orthodox Jewish settlers in the West Bank are following their strict literal interpretations of the torah. Next to the Abrahamic believes, the Dharmic religions of Asia also have their unavoidable share of literalism lunatics.
The centrality of some faith and law as a "seamless garment" of life is neither odd nor bad. But it is important that faith and law can develop and adapt.
To me Kant’s categorical imperative cited above is a must at the core of all such believe systems. The emphasis to me is on universal law. Simple group acclamation to override basic human ethics is unacceptable – be it by G.W.B. or O.b.L. followers.
PS: While writing the above I ran across this snipped from a Pepe Escobar piece on Iran:
[Ayatollah Khamenei] is considered to have an outstanding knowledge of literature, poetry, music, Iranian history and philosophy – including Western philosophy. He routinely discusses Immanuel Kant and Max Weber, the Paris Commune and the history of Marxism, and compares the great Persian poet Hafez with French romantic poets.
Sometimes I doubt that the Ratzinger’s of the West have similiar broad interests.