Simon Róbert

The Social Anatomy of Islam


Sharica1

Religious law and umma may be regarded as mutually presupposing twins. Both are virtual realities because the fabric of social practice is of different material, but in their virtual nature they are much more real than social practice, since its transitory and subsidiary quality is found to be trivial by the severe and lasting standards of the twins and it is dismissed as ephemeral. Sharica does this not in an affirmative way but by setting out "limits" (hudūd), by revealing the anti-sharica nature of necessarily wicked actions that are not pleasing to Allah and condemning them as bidca. We have mentioned before that Islam is a nomokratia, as were the outlook and social practice of ancient Israel (in contrast to antinomian Christianity), and in this the divine law designates the workings and limits of the cosmos and the human world, which means that the spiritual, religious (dīn2) and human spheres (dunyā) are not to be distinguished from one another, and that the work of law-giving and the setting of obligations and limits has been performed once and for all by divine fiat. To change that is rebellion against God, to acknowledge it as precisely as possible is a duty, the measure of which is the roots of religion (usūl ad-dīn), first and foremost revelation. The study of the law that defines the "metabolism" of social existence is thus conceived as the task not of non-existent political science but of theology (basically, study of religious law) and of its strictly circumscribed sphere of operations.

The Social Anatomy of Islam

Tartalomjegyzék


Kiadó: Akadémiai Kiadó – Felsőbbfokú Tanulmányok Intézete

Online megjelenés éve: 2024

ISBN: 978 615 574 253 8

This work analyses some essential features of the classical as well modern Islamic society. Islam cannot be regarded as a religion in the strict sense of the word, because civil change marginalized it and made it into societally insignificant movement in the private sphere. Some consider it a kind of a politically organized formation, but politically unified Islamic society disintegrated from the second half of the ninth century, independent units came into being reproducing the original model. Others are of the opinion that Islam is an ideology. This, however, would mean that during one and a half millennium the Muslims gave wrong answers to the different challenges. Some consider Islam as a culture, but this concept is a category of civil society subjected to permanent change. Therefore, we shall interpret Islam as society-integrating network which organized its own society, the umma on the principle of repristination or retraditionalisation.The main topics treated in the first part of our work are: the problem of genesis; the hermeneutics of the main concepts of Political Islam counterpointed by the categories of Ibn Khaldún’s power-state; integration and stratification of society; forms of changes (reform, revolt, revolution). The second part is dealing with the problems of modern Islam, taking into account revivalist movements from the Khárijites to the Islamic State.

Hivatkozás: https://mersz.hu/simon-the-social-anatomy-of-islam//

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