Abdessamad Belhaj

Authority in Contemporary Islam

Structures, Figures and Functions


Authority and power

An important feature of European conservative political thought since the 18th century is the distinction between authority and power. In The Sociological Tradition, Nisbet offers a classical discussion of how conservatism believes in the distribution of political centres where “pluralism of authority rests first and foremost upon local community, family, guild, and the various other sources of custom and tradition” in opposition to “political power-rational, centralized, and popular – from the legislative pattern of the Revolution”.1 For conservatives, from Louis de Bonald to Robert Nisbet, power is radical and despotic when unmediated by social bodies while authority operates in multiple spheres: the family, religion, the state, etc. and each has a proper and constituted authority.2

Authority in Contemporary Islam

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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