Islamic Law and the Humanities: Reflections on Egypt

The study of Islamic law has, with very few exceptions, been largely isolated from the realms of ethical and political philosophy and some of the most recent developments in comparative legal history. In cases where these disciplines have been brought to bear upon the study of Islamic law, their concepts have been too often imported wholesale, with little concern over how the form, structure and history of Islamic law might prompt a reconsideration of them. Moreover, the complexities of Islamic law are too often cast through the implicit framework of US jurisprudence, as if these two traditions were fully or largely commensurable with each other. As a result, there is little exploration of the historical processes by which these two perhaps very different traditions are rendered mutually commensurable to each other - or more precisely, how one tradition is made commensurable to another. Using ethnographic and historical material from Egypt, this paper reflects on how the humanities, in the form of ethical and political philosophy and comparative legal history, can help us understand some of the ways that Islamic law is incommensurable from the dominant traditions that currently provide our understanding of “law.” At the same time, it highlights how such an understanding of Islamic law can provoke a profound reconsideration of some of the basic presuppositions of ethical and political philosophy and theory, particularly with respect to the presupposed connections between law, politics, justice, sovereignty, equality and violence.