Abdessamad Belhaj

Authority in Contemporary Islam

Structures, Figures and Functions

The claims of authority of IUMS

For clarity purposes, we need to distinguish between claims and practices of authority. The former are underlying positions about one’s status and its aspired influence in the public sphere while the latter are actions taken to perform the claims of authority. Claims of authority tell us a great deal about the identity of the agent and the role it wishes to play in the religious, moral, epistemic or political fields. Most often, the claims of Islamic authority make appeal to the normative ethics of legitimacy. For example, one might claim to be a caliph, an imām, amīr, a ʿālim or a faqīh to mobilise the normative registers associated in Islamic ethics with these religious-political roles. All these functions are significant for various Muslim communities. Nevertheless, it is another matter whether the practices of authority are derived from the same register or other fields of action in the modern times, or whether the modes of action validate the claims of authority at all. In this section, my goal is to discuss the claims of authority made by IUMS. Afterwards, I will address its practices of authority.

Tartalomjegyzék

Kiadó: Akadémiai Kiadó – Ludovika Egyetemi Kiadó

Online megjelenés éve: 2024

ISBN: 978 963 454 960 4

Authority is a key question in Islamic studies and beyond. This book examines the nature, figures, structures and functions of religious authority in contemporary Islamic ethics. It also discusses how Islamic authority and political power compete and/or cooperate in Muslim contexts and Europe. Moreover, it provides a coherent framework to understand authority as a moral foundation in relation to community, power, tradition and subversion. Various cases from Europe and the Muslim world are studied here to showcase the claims and practices of authority in their contexts. Despite its active role and resourcefulness in contemporary Islam, religious authority has to confront many limitations, including the dynamics of secularisation and individualisation. The author is a senior researcher at the Religion and Society Research Institute of the Eötvös József Research Centre at the University of Public Service (Budapest).

Hivatkozás: https://mersz.hu/belhaj-authority-in-contemporary-islam//

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