Table of Contents
Author's Note xiii
Preface xix
Acknowledgments xxix
An Introduction to Shari'ah xxxi
What Is Shari'ah? xxxii
What Is Islamic law? xxxii
The Difference between Islamic Law and Muslim Law xxxiii
The Sources of Islamic Law xxxiv
The Nature and Purpose of Islamic Law xxxvii
The Difference between Shari'ah and Fiqh xl
The Sacred and Profane in Islamic Law xlvii
The Rights of God and the Rights of Humans l
Modernity and the Deterioration of Islamic Law lii
Part I The Islamic Dream and the Chaos of the Modern Condition
1 Genesis: Negotiating the Muslim and the Islamic 3
Growing Up with the Islamic Dream 3
The Nightmare of 9/11 and Its Aftermath 7
Waking Up to the Truth 9
2 Awakening: Reasonableness and Islam 19
The Plight of Modem Muslims 19
Islam as a Complete Way of Life and the Reality of Realization 35
The Modern Challenge of Islamicity 44
Reasonableness, Socialization, and Contemporary Islamic Law 49
Musings on the Absurd 55
3 Crisis: Making Sense of Shari'ah Today 63
Practicing the Pedantic and the Politics of Affectation 63
Muslims in the West as a Microcosm 75
4 Repose: The Islamic between Harmony and Dissonance 87
Affectation as Public Performance 87
Stereotyped Forms and the Practice of Islamic Law 91
Nature of Authority in Islamic Law and Chaos 98
The Music of Shari'ah, Silence of Tradition, and Dissonance of Modernity 99
The Dream Revisited 102
Part II The Culture of Ugliness and the Plight of Modern Islam
5 Faulty Paradigms in Constructing the Islamic 113
The Recurrence of the Ugly in Modern Islam 113
The Muslim Response and Western Vilifications 120
The Origins of Western Hate 122
The Clash of Civilizations Thesis as an Explanation 125
Clash of Civilizations and the Expression of Prejudice 134
The Banality of Ugliness and the Dialectics of Sin 135
Islam, Cruelty, and Modernity 144
6 Beyond Islamophobia 151
The Jahiliyya of Modern Ignorance 151
The Imperative of Empathetic Knowing 153
The Critical Imperative 163
Islamophobia and the Danger to the World 171
7 God the Universal 183
Muslim Self-Criticism between Universalism and Exceptionalism 183
The Universality of Ugliness and Beauty 195
Universal Mercy and Extreme Acts of Ugliness 199
8 What Really Went Wrong 203
Postcolonialism and the Rise of Modern Apologetics 203
Wahhabism: The Puritans of Islam 215
Muhammad bin 'Abd al-Wahhab: The Founder and His Thought 227
Why Did Wahhabism Survive and Spread? 248
The Salafis 251
9 God, Shari' ah, and Beauty 271
Puritanical-Salafism, the Authoritarian Specter, and Social Death 271
Classical Music and the Qur'an 282
Submitting to Infinite Divinity 285
Part III Reclaiming Shari'ah in the Modern Age
10 Shari'ah as Reasoning with God 291
The Shari'ah Predicament 291
Shari'ah: Between Objectivity and Subjectivity 309
Do We Need Shari'ah? 311
Reasoning with God 318
Shari'ah and Virtue 328
Islamic Law and Reasonableness 338
11 Beyond a Reasonable Shari'ah 359
Beyond Reasonableness: An Ethical Approach to Shari'ah 359
Godliness and Godlessness 366
Shari'ah and Seeking Godliness 373
12 The Caliphate of Humanity 391
On Cursing the Devil and Other Memories 391
On the Ethics of Diversity 405
The Caliphate of Humankind: Ascending to an Ethereal Humanity 411
Concluding the Journey 415
Reclaiming the Path to the Self in God and to God in the Self 415
Notes 421
Index 487