Preliminary Discourse

The fact that Shatibi assigned revelatory status to the Shariah means that the maqasid must equally reflect this transcendence. And so to assert, for example, ‘human development’ as a valid maqsid of the Shariah is to impudently elevate ephemeral human conceptual constructs into the divine register—not that this should not be pursued as a valid purpose but that it has to be understood as particular human specification of transcendently and divinely immutable principles, such as justice (al-‘adl) and peace (al-salam). We say these are immutable for the reason that they are the Names of God, and thus intrinsic to Him, although it has been said that they are “neither Him nor other than Him” ( la huwa wa la ghayruh ). Ultimately then, the maqasid should be based, on the highest level, on the Divine Names, as consistent His declaration in a hadith qudsi: “I was a hidden Treasure and wish to be known, so I created the world so that I am known.” This hadith amply testifies to the purpose of...

By modern standards, earlier theological quibbles would have been ill-understood. The Mu’tazilite persecution of theological rivals during the mihna (Inquisition) seems almost incomprehensible, for it would appear that such abstruse and arcane discourse would have nothing to do with political life, far less for sustaining power. And yet, historically theology has always enjoyed a love-hate relationship with the state. This becomes more understood when we analyze how a more politicized form of Islam gradually gains support in the modern world, and why, for example, an ‘Islam’ that is wedded to political ideology or indeed ideological Islam in its many forms becomes so popular amongst the disenfranchised and dispossessed segment of the Muslim community. Islam’s negotiation with modernity is represented by two prototypical strands found in its early history, namely in the debate between the famous theologian, jurist and Sufi, Harith al-Muhasibi, and the theologian-jurist, Ahmad i...

Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas’s definition of ‘Islamic civilization’: “I define Islamic civilization as a civilization that emerges among the diversity of cultures of Muslim peoples of the world as a result of the permeation of the basic elements of the religion of Islam which those peoples have caused to emerge from within themselves. The process by which such emergence comes about is called Islamization, which is the liberation first from magical, mythical, animistic and ethnic cultural tradition incompatible with Islam, and then from secular control over one’s reason and one’s language. Whatever basic and praiseworthy elements of the pre-Islamic civilization that bind people together and are accepted as compatible with Islam become part of Islamic civilization. It is a living civilization whose pulse describes a process of Islamization, not in the dialectical sense of an evolutionary ‘development’, but in the sense of a progress involving every generation of Muslim towards r...

There is something about the modern condition that renders it hospitable to a rebellious outlook. That means in the mind one wants to rebel against something, but really there is nothing in particular to which one objects, only a protest for the sake of protest. Francis Fukuyama sees it as the prelude to the Last Man that Nietzsche announced so dramatically. The natural and final culmination of that is queer theory, the will to be different for no other reason than just to be different. Typically one thinks that this is natural and part of being human. As a matter of fact it’s not. This desire to be rebel and revolt for no reason is in fact symptomatic of an inner spiritual unrest, lack of satisfaction, lack of certainty and understanding. Don’t for one second think that this is squarely due to the secular, post-metaphysical and post-religious conditions of modern life, for even within religion, forces have been at work to distance the individual believer from the inner sanctuaries o...

If the maqasid al-shari’ah are so integral to the Shari’ah, why were they not as systematically and extensively elaborated as the science of usul al-fiqh (legal methodology)? As early as the 10 th century, these purposes have been mentioned, such as by the eminent Sufi and jurist, al-Tirmidhi al-Hakim in his work on the Objectives of Prayer ( al-salah wa maqasiduha ). Then Abu Ma’ali al-Juwayni in the 11 th century classified them into the essentials ( daruriyyat ), the supplementary ( hajiyyat ) and the embellishments ( tahsiniyyat ). His student Abu Hamid al-Ghazali expanded this into the ‘five essentials’ (which is still in vogue today), namely the protection ( hifz ) of religion ( din ), life ( nafs ), intellect (‘ aql ), property ( mal ) and lineage ( nasl ). In all these there is recognition that the Shari’ah actually pursues certain objectives which have to be kept in mind and not simply apply the rules for the sake of applying them. Yet none have been able to produce a sys...