The Life of Shari'a

A Comparative Anthropology of Law

Youssef Belal (Autor)

Buch | Softcover

374 Seiten

2025
University of California Press (Verlag)
978-0-520-41003-9 (ISBN)

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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 shariʿa to its “law,” Youssef Belal provocatively argues that Islamic shariʿa is a mode of knowledge with its own concepts and scholarly categories through which the world and the self are grasped. The Life of Shariʿa 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 shariʿa, a powerful argument for its continued relevance to the life of contemporary Muslims.

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 Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study in 2016. He is author of Le cheikh et le calife: Sociologie religieuse de l’Islam politique au Maroc (The sheikh and the caliph: Religious sociology of political Islam in Morocco).

Contents

Preface and Acknowledgments
Note on Translation and Transliteration

Introduction

Part One. Politics
1. Jurisprudence of the Revolution
2. Law, Power, and Shariʿa’s 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 Shariʿa’s Displacement
7. Islamic Legal Knowledge and the New Real

Part Four. Episteme
8. Kalām 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 Shariʿa
14. Law and the Shaping of the Self in Contemporary Europe
15. Islamic Reason
Conclusion

Notes
Bibliography
Index

Erscheinungsdatum	09.05.2025
Verlagsort	Berkerley
Sprache	englisch
Maße	152 x 229 mm
Gewicht	499 g
Themenwelt	Geisteswissenschaften ► Philosophie ► Östliche Philosophie
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Religion / Theologie ► Islam
	Recht / Steuern ► Allgemeines / Lexika
	Recht / Steuern ► EU / Internationales Recht
ISBN-10	0-520-41003-3 / 0520410033
ISBN-13	978-0-520-41003-9 / 9780520410039
Zustand	Neuware