Contingency in a Sacred Law: Legal and Ethical Norms in the Muslim Fiqh.

• Author: BROCKOPP, JONATHAN E.
• Position: Review

Contingency in a Sacred Law: Legal and Ethical Norms in the Muslim Fiqh. By BABER JOHANSEN. Studies in Islamic Law and Society, vol. 7. Leiden: BRILL, 1999. Pp. xiii + 521. Nig. 246.00/US $144.50.

Although largely a collection of previously published material, this volume provides a welcome opportunity to assess a significant portion of Johansen's scholarship as it has developed over time. An important seventy-page introduction is new, while the other fifteen articles appeared from 1977 to 1994. A few of these articles are taken from such well-known journals as Studia Islamica and Die Welt des Islams, but the majority were originally published in Festschriften and lesser-known journals. The variety of topics is indicative of Johansen's intellectual range, but all focus on the intersection between legal norms and social practice.

Johansen has divided the book into thematic chapters, and the most successful of these (those on the Islamic city, and the question of Muslims living under non-Muslim rule) collect articles that are closely related to one another. It is particularly gratifying to see suggestions and ideas in one essay developed in following articles. Similarly, the introductory chapter provides a synthetic account of the religious role of Islamic law that helps put the other essays in perspective, particularly those that focus on terminology and process and not so much on social history.

It is unfortunate that this introduction is marred by dozens of misspellings and minor grammatical errors that occasionally lead to incomprehensible sentences (as is the case on pp. 27-28). But these do not take away from the fact that this is one of the most important treatments of Islamic law since Schacht.

After an interesting delineation between theological and legal spheres in Islam, Johansen carefully reconstructs the Weberian basis of Schacht's theories. He then levels a series of critiques, largely aimed at recovering the nature of Islamic law as a religious institution. By placing the academic study of Islamic law into this context, Johansen both establishes the importance of revisiting Schacht's much-maligned theses and also nuances Weber's project of comparative religious law.

In particular, Johansen argues that Schacht and his intellectual forebears (save Goldziher) missed the importance of ikhtilaf in Islamic law, which Johansen sees as the key to...