Islamic Legal Orthodoxy: Twelver Shiite Responses to the Sunni Legal System.

• Author: MADELUNG, WILFERD
• Position: Review

Islamic Legal Orthodoxy: Twelver Shiite Responses to the Sunni Legal System. By DEVIN J. STEWART. Salt Lake City: UNIVERSITY OF UTAH PRESS, 1998. Pp. 280. $40.

This book surveys and analyzes Twelver Shiite relations with the Sunni legal establishment, comprising the four recognized Sunni legal schools, which the author defines as "Islamic Legal Orthodoxy." He sees this relationship as determined by the status of Shiites as a "stigmatized" minority group facing a Sunni majority able to impose its concept of orthodoxy on Islam. Shiites, he argues, could in their "predicament" of being threatened with exclusion from Islam react in three ways: by practicing dissimulation while outwardly participating in the Sunni legal system, by adopting key Sunni legal concepts and arguing that Shiism did not violate the legal consensus established by the Sunni jurists, or by rejecting the system of legal orthodoxy and thus accepting deviant status and alienation within the Muslim community. In practice, the second alternative predominated and eventually prevailed. Twelver Shiites widely adopted Sunni legal concepts and methods and came to form a professional guild-like institution of legal scholars (mujtahid) that was closely patterned on the guildlike schools of the Sunni jurists. In analyzing this development, the author notes, in particular, the frequent affiliation of Twelver Shiite scholars with the [Sh[bar{a}]fi.sup.[subset]][bar{i}] school, both for study and legal practice. The core of the book, however, deals with the adoption of the principle of consensus ([ijm[bar{a}].sup.[subset]]) by the Shiite jurists, which the author sees as essentially motivated by the aim of gaining acceptance by the Sunni legal establishment as an orthodox school on a par with the Sunni schools.

The subject of the book is certainly an important one for a proper understanding of the evolution of Twelver Shiism and has so far not received sufficient attention in Islamic studies. The author's discussion is often well informed and brings out many new data and insights. Yet his overall perspective in considering the [Sh[bar{i}].sup.[subset]]a as a permanently stigmatized sect vainly trying to escape a predicament simplifies and at times distorts the complex relationship between Twelvers and Sunnis, which has historically varied greatly in place and time. A lack of adequate analysis of some concepts and improper use of terms add to such misinterpretations.

Symptomatic for the author's one-sided perspective is his initial suggestion that the term [Sh[bar{i}].sup.[subset]]a or [Sh[bar{i}].sup.[subset]]at [Al[bar{i}].sup.[subset]] was derogatory (p. 2). [Sh[bar{i}].sup.[subset]]a, as is well-known, was the name used by the Shiites themselves, just as Sunnis named themselves Ahl al-Sunna. When Sunnis and Shiites spoke politely with each other, they used these names. When they wanted to be derogatory, Sunnis called their Shiite opponents R[bar{a}]fida, and Shiites answered by calling Sunnis Naw[bar{a}]sib. The latter term does not refer to the appointment of Ab[bar{u}] Bakr as caliph by the Sunnis, as suggested by the author (p. 71, n. 34), but to their making war on [Al[bar{i}].sup.[subset]] (man nasaba harban li-[Al[bar{i}].sup.[subset]]).

In order to justify his use of the concept of Islamic orthodoxy against the widely held view of Western scholars that it is inappropriate, Stewart argues, a priori, that it seems hardly possible for a religion like Islam not to have an authority to define orthodoxy and heterodoxy. Strongly influenced by the studies of G. Makdisi, he sees this authority as vested in the collectivity of jurists of the four Sunni legal schools. Since the legal authority of these jurists was, at least in premodern times, not seriously challenged in Sunni Islam, one can indeed properly speak of Sunni legal orthodoxy (noting that Sunni theologians and others often had quite different views of orthodoxy). But to speak of Islamic legal orthodoxy, there would have to he an authority universally acknowledged by Muslims, not only by Sunnis. The plain fact (partly admitted by the author, p. 44) was, that in Islam, just as in Christianity after...