Sharia Compliant: A User's Guide to Hacking Islamic Law

Encountering Traditions

by Rumee Ahmed

For over a thousand years, Muslim scholars worked to ensure that Islamic law was always fresh and vibrant, that it responded to the needs of an evolving Muslim community and served as a moral and spiritual compass. They did this by "hacking" Islamic law in accordance with changing times and contexts, diving into the interconnected Islamic legal tradition to recalibrate what was outdated, making some laws work better and more efficiently while leaving others undisturbed. These hacking skills made Islamic law both flexible and relevant so that it could meet the needs of a community with changing values while remaining true to its ancient roots. Today, the hacking process has stalled in the face of unprecedented structural challenges, and Islamic law has stagnated.

This book is designed to revitalize the hacking tradition by getting readers involved in the process. It walks them through the ins and outs of Islamic legal change, vividly describing how Muslim scholars have met new and evolving challenges on topics as diverse as abolition, democracy, finance, gender, human rights, sexuality, and more. And it provides step-by-step instructions for readers to hack laws for themselves, so that through their engagement and creativity, they can help Islamic law regain its intrinsic vitality and resume its role as a forward-looking source for good in the world.

Genres: Islam, Religion, Muslims, Nonfiction

270 pages, Kindle Edition

Published May 1, 2018

Reviews

[Aref Ashoori · Rating 4 out of 5]

مسلمانان فقه‌اندیش روز به روز بیشتر احساس می‌کنند که باورهای دینی آنها نماینده‌ای ندارد، فقه اسلامی گسترده‌تر از آن چیزی است که علمای برجسته‌ی مسلمان به ما می‌گویند، و غیرقابل قبول است که علمای حوصله‌سربَر برای اکثریت مسلمانان سخن بگویند. تَرَک‌هایی که در دیوار ستبر انحصار تفسیریِ گروه کوچکی از علمای فقه‌اندیش در گفت‌وگوهای فقهی افتاده، حالا دیگر به چشم می‌آید. به نظرم شکست این انحصار تفسیری اجتناب‌ناپذیر است. (از متن کتاب به‌ترجمه‌ی یاسر میردامادی - انتشارات نوگام)

[Brian Griffith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ahmed conducts a conversational-tone exploration of how Islamic law has evolved over time, in matters such as slavery, finance, image-making, democracy, female leadership, or equality in the family. His impartial discussion shows the sharia as a work in progress, much as Christian moral orthodoxy has developed over time. He invites constructive engagement, reporting recent struggles and accomplishments by Muslim activists working with organizations such as Musawah Global Movement for Equality and Justice in the Muslim Family or the Fiqh Council of North America. It's a challenge to compassionate Muslims everywhere, to expand the circle of engagement for interpreting tradition in an inclusive, participatory way.

[Abolfazl Izadi · Rating 5 out of 5]

“فقه در جهان جدید_ راهنمای هک فقه اسلامی”
اگر به خرد جمعی باور داشته باشیم، جامعه اشتباه نمی کند بلکه علمای دینی تافته جدابافته و جامعه ستیز برخطا هستند. اگر جامعه نتواند برخطا توافق کند بنابراین برای تشخیص روال درست، ما اعضای جامعه باید مشخص کنیم که واقعا روی چه چیزی توافق داریم به جای آن که بر گروه کوچکی تکیه کنیم که به ما بگویند ما بر سر چه چیزی باید توافق کنیم.
بسیاری از راهبران دینی به ویژه فقیهان شما را به این باور می کشانند که باید در همه چیز از آن ها اطاعت کنید و چون و چرا در کار آنان در حکم بدعت، ارتداد و خیانت است. این رویکرد اقتدارگرایانه به فقه اسلامی بر پایه شرمساری بنا شده تا جامعه را به تبعیت بکشاند.

[Anthony · Rating 5 out of 5]

First off, the title of the book is a bit misleading. A better title would be “How Islamic Law Changes” in that the author, with a sense of humor and a clear, engaging writing style, describes the methods and steps in the development of Islamic law which remains true to pre-colonial methodologies yet address contemporary issues.

[Hussein Aboubakr · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rumee Ahmed’s Shariah Compliant is primarily an insightful study in the contemporary evolution of the Muslim relation to Islamic Law. The book is not so much a guide, but rather a study in the evolution of Islamic legal tradition with the emergence of diaspora Islam. The book is clearly geared towards a North American Muslim audience that lives a profoundly different social experience than Muslims living in historical Muslim lands in the present or in the past. This makes his study not just a study of contemporary and cyber evolution of Islamic Law, but a study in the diffusion of Islamic authority in Muslim communities in North America. Thus, such evolution should not be seen as exclusively the result of the pressure of modern challenges, cyberactivism, globalization, etc. but also the result of a new Muslim reality that lacks authoritative institutions on law, a situation which lacks precedent in Islamic history. Thus, his study is a part of an emergence of a new Islamic experience that carries the main characteristic of the absence of political authority, dramatically the inverse of the Islamic historical experience.

Ahmed’s reproduction of fiqh concepts in the language of patching and hacking, terms that would raise the eyebrows of any traditional faqih, is not merely a modern approximated translation as he may suggest, but rather a new epistemological conceptualization of the practices of lawmaking into pre-existing modern concepts of action. That is, he is not only engaging in creating an explanatory model but a whole new legal theory that is democratized and. Such theory sidesteps the whole question of legal authority, not through theoretical deliberation, but actual practice. This act in itself is yet another inversion of traditional legal theories which puts theory as an antecedent to practice. The primary vehicle used to achieve this is the substitution of argument with account.

The study succeeds in offering a different image of Islamic Law that correlates to reality more than traditional accounts, law as seen and viewed by the people who live it rather than by the people who make it. This makes his study more a product of sociology rather than legal studies, but it also begs the question of the word “law” is still an appropriate definition if it's more of social practice and individual commitment than an enforced regulation. A helpful comparison could be made to the relationship between diaspora Jewish communities and the Jewish halakhah.

[Bharata Satria · Rating 5 out of 5]

Buku ini luar biasa ... Tahun 80'an saya masih menyaksikan masa ketika sebagian ulama masih menganggap fotografi haram, sekarang semua orang (termasuk ulama ternama) melakukan selfie.

Hukum Islam berubah mengikuti jaman, dan proses perubahannya bukan lagi monopoli ekslusif para ulama, tapi siapapun yang bersedia menekuni kitab-kitab hukum yang sekarang mudah didapat di mana-mana.

Buku bagus yang berpandangan optimis terhadap perkembangan hukum Islam di masa depan.

[Usman Malik · Rating 4 out of 5]

An easy to read and easy guide to Islamic Law and how it ha been hacked over time to suit the powerful and to update Islamic laws to the times.

[Maryam · Rating 3 out of 5]

would not recommend reading this on public transit