Islamic Law and Religion

Abstract

Although the seminar's presentations were not centered around a single issue in Islamic law, two common purposes were apparent: to explore the nature of change in Islamic law and to understand the relationship between religious authority and the practice of the law. It is useful to begin with the presentation of Abbas Amanat (Yale University) on the history of modem Shi'i law, since he was the only speaker who held to the characterii.ation of Islamic law (at least in modem Iran) as removed from practical life, concerned with insignificant details of ritual, and heir to a textual tradition reduced to commentaries on commentaries. Amanat decried the fact that the Iranian ulema missed the opportunity in the nineteenth century to refonn significantly the legal system. He argued that the success achieved by the religious scholars in instigating the tobacco boycott of 1891 should have mobilized them to call for significant institutional changes in Iranian law. Yet with the end of the boycott, the scholars returned to the same old business of speculating on questions irrelevant to the needs of a changing society. Amanat admitted in the question and answer period that the ulema were restricted by political circumstances; indeed they may not have survived to seize control of the government in our times if they had pressed for reform too quickly. lbis is an issue that has not been explored sufficiently in the history of Islamic law: when jurists had no direct coercive power over governments, how did they use their moral authority to effect change? No doubt there were always individuals who had few scruples about endorsing whatever the ruling elite desired, yet there were others who pressed for change when they calculated that such pressure could be effective. Close biographical studies of individual scholars in their social ...