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To welcome you all to our final session for the term of the Oxford political seminar.

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And we're delighted to have two very distinguished speakers from actually both from across the Atlantic.

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One of them's been kind enough to drop in Oxford and spend a few years with us, so we have with us Mohamed Fadel and Lena Sollima.

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Mohamed will be going first, so I'll briefly introduce him and his lecture.

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I'm Osama Azmi. I'm a department lecturer at Synopsys College, and Faisal is really the brains behind this.

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We're co-convenor for the political thought seminars facility is professor of history at this college and gives us great pleasure to host you all.

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We want to remind you that this is going to be a seminar where the speakers speak for about 20 minutes each and we welcome people's questions.

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Please type them up in the Q&A and we'll try to address them in the discussion that will make for the last half of the seminar.

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So Mohamed Fadel is a full professor and former Canada researcher for the Law and Economics of Islamic Law,

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the University of Toronto's Faculty of Law, where he joined in January 2006.

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He has a Ph.D. and his Ph.D. was from the University of Chicago on the legal process in mediaeval Islamic law.

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He's also practised as a lawyer in the city of New York and so admitted to the bar in New York,

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but has been a prolific author on the law and at the intersection of Islamic law.

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Also, of course, as we've discussed Islamic legal procedure, but also, you know, it's your your engagements are quite wide ranging.

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See that also political theory and history of political theory.

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And today you're here to speak about the protean sovereign of Sunni law.

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So we're very much looking forward to that. Mohammed, if I could invite you to speak for 20 minutes.

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Thank you. Thank you very much. Sami, thank you very much. My son, it's a great pleasure to be here.

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Feisal and I were classmates way back when in Chicago, so it's great to see him, which I could be in person.

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Then, of course, I've known forever, so it's wonderful. And just to clarify the record, Lena is a Jerusalemite.

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She's not a Native North American, so I just want to make that clear to everybody.

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So let me share my screen. Vinas also opposed to identity politics and doesn't believe that that should have been stated.

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Let's take that, for the record, very clearly. Yeah. OK, let me see if I can get this right.

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OK? The protean sovereign of Sunni law. What sort of a strange title.

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But I want I chose it because I wanted to frame what I consider to be really a central feature of the

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way Sunni jurists write about the state and sovereignty and the idea of protean captures it because.

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It's very difficult to capture sort of the locus of sovereignty in so many constitutional writing.

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And I think this is very important idea to grasp not only the the ambiguity in legal writing,

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but the reason why there's a principled reason why is very hard to capture it in a in a clear term in Sydney and Sydney law.

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So I want to begin by just.

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Pointing out what about what that will have us translation of a lot of these alarmists on the air and this is not to pick on her.

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But she translates the first chapter, Theakston Imama, as on the appointment of the sovereign, the AMA.

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So I think this is a very common assumption amongst writers in the stomach political theory that, well, the Caliph is this is the sovereign.

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And so we are just going to assume that and we will approach writings on on public offices from that perspective.

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Right. And I think this is a very sort of casual.

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Analogy between the caliphate and the king and kingship, European kingship, or British kingship, which is completely unjustified.

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Once one looks into the details of Islamic law, so as we're probably familiar in the British doctrine,

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you have this very sort of strange metaphysical. Theory of the Kings, two bodies and.

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I can't I don't know all the details of the the genealogy, the theological genealogy of of this doctrine.

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But even as late as the 17th century, it is fundamental to understanding the authority of the British crown,

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and it's fundamental to very basic cases of English constitutional law that end up being very important in American constitutional law.

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For example, Calvin's case right now in what I want to try to say, in fact, there is not a problem of the caliphs two bodies.

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And there's a reason for this, which I'm going to get into,

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but the solution just means that we don't have a tangible personalised expression of sovereignty in Sunni jurisprudence.

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That's what makes it protean because it shows up all over the place.

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Right. That's basically what I want to say.

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So if we look at early legal texts and here I'm talking mainly based on my knowledge of my early Maliki legal texts such as the water and moved out.

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When you come across all these different terms, you can come across Khalifa.

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Imam Sultan, Pardy, Wiley, Hakim, Amir, etc. And all of these terms are used in connexion with the exercise of what we would call sovereign power.

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And what I mean by sovereign power is the power to decide something finally and to give a conclusive resolution to something.

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Right? And so Malik and early on and early Lebanese legal authorities use these terms interchangeably willy nilly.

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Right. In fact, Khalifa oftentimes is the least political of them.

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So if you do a quick search of Khalifa in the model one,

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most of the occasions I believe are in prayer, where the prayer leader something happens to him.

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He can't complete the prayer cycle. And so he appoints al-Khalifa to complete it.

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Right. But nevertheless, 34 definitely has political resonances, but it's not.

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It doesn't monopolise any sort of sense an idea of sovereignty.

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The the the equivocal terminology or the variable term analogical language used

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to describe sovereignty is very nicely reflected in this one very short text,

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right, where you get multiple terms for a very simple problem.

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Right? So Sanan asks, even though Kassem in the modern one, what's your review regarding the rulings of the governor?

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The governor of thought, so he calls them first and well.

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Right? And what he's doing is hackable, right?

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And then he calls him. Use the law right, which, you know, we might later call the practise a map, right?

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The sort of the prayer leader in Pennsylvania. So then he asked, are they valid and effective to the same extent as the decisions of judges in Maliki?

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So now we get the term pulled off the plural of cards, right?

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And so it will cause him says yes, unless it is manifestly unless his decisions are manifestly unjust,

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in which in which case the judge can repeal them. Right.

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And on what grounds does it not reach this conclusion again?

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There it's it's very interesting for understanding the doctrine of implicit talk of sovereignty here.

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He bases on analogy to arbitration. Malik was asked about two men who appointed a third to arbitrate between them, and then he did.

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Malik said I believe the judge should enforce the arbitrators decision in their matter and not overturn it unless it was manifestly unjust.

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Right. So what we see here, what I would argue here is that sovereignty is expressed in a legal decision is finds its origin

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in the decisions of individual people to delegate authority to others to rule on their behalf,

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to make a judgement on their behalf.

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Right now, this is not a purely positive visiting delegation in the sense that it's a matter of whatever the ruler decides is proper because.

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Exercise of sovereignty, as Malik conceives it in this case is regulated by a norm,

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so the arbitrator, the arbitrators legitimate sovereignty is a function of two things.

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It's a function of the consent to his status as arbitrator and a function of his substantive decision not being manifestly unjust.

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Right. And so the same principle consent plus legality, right?

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Regulates. All these offices and regulates how all sovereignty is constructed and by implication.

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Right. Sovereignty is exercised through this mechanism, and that's why you have multiple offices exercising sovereignty.

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Hence, the protein character of sovereignty. Right. And this comes across very explicitly and I think theorise very nicely in the work of Shehab

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the karate that I translated the criteria for distinguishing legal decisions from opinions,

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et cetera. Right. And so he deals with this expressly in his answer to Question three,

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where he says public offices exist across a spectrum of powers with two extremes in the middle.

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The Office of the Caliph, which is the greater imam a.

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That's the office with the greatest power arbitration, which comes into existence by an act of the two students is the office with the least power?

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And between these are many intermediate opposites.

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And he then gives 15 examples, and his point is all these different offices all exercised sovereignty in the sense that I talked about,

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mainly having the authority to resolve disputes conclusively, right?

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And you can sort of systematically identify sovereign power through this range of what's the scope of?

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Sovereign power that each office has. So the imam and the American, Adam, the Caliph has the greatest scope.

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Right. And that is reflected in the fact that he can do fatwas.

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He can act as a judge. And then he can act in the public interest.

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But what's crucial to understand in all these cases is that when the Caliph.

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Act extremist acts judicially, he must actually act as a judge.

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Right? Because the principle that Malik asserted and or Possam asserted, is that when the wily the governor issues a ruling.

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It's valid and enforceable, I an exercise arbitrary as long as it's not manifestly unjust.

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It corresponds to the substantive idea of law.

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So although in principle, the Caliph has all the powers of lesser offices in practise, his exercise of that power.

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Transforms him into a judge when he acts judicial, transforms him into a mufti,

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when he acts as a mufti, transforms into a witness when he acts as a witness.

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ET cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Right. So in all cases, there's never any sovereignty attached to his person.

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Right. So his body. He does not have a natural body that is of any significance to sovereignty.

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Right. Unlike the English King. OK.

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So in that case, who is the sovereign right, where is the sovereign in suddenly thought?

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And so my argument is that the sovereign is a non corporeal entity, namely the Muslim community.

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Right. And so we see that expressly in this very interesting text of the Hanafi jurist who is maybe

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a century before Gadhafi as Casani Abubakar Casani died at the end of the 12th century.

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And here he is discussing. Why a judge does not lose jurisdiction when the appointing power.

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I like the Caliph dies. Because one might think that the judge is the delegate of the caliphate.

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And so he is a representative of the callous and normal principles of agency law state that when the principal dies,

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the agent loses all authority because the principal is gone now from a legal perspective,

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which is just not the rule for a judge, even after the Caliph dies or the pope is deposed.

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The judge's jurisdiction remains valid, and the reason, according to Alqasem,

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is because the judge is not appointed is neither appointed pursuant to the personal authority of the Caliph,

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nor does he act to further the jurisdiction, the personal jurisdiction of the Caliph, rather in both cases.

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He's appointed pursuant to the authority of the Muslim community, and he acts for the Muslim community,

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and the Muslim community does not die right, as he says here explicitly.

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Is it? They cannot excuse me when we I get him by the mouth of Khalifa Bashir, the will air of the Muslim community persists after his death.

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So what does that make? The Caliph makes the Caliph an agent.

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But interestingly, he's not just any agent. He uses the term rasool, which in Hanafi fit is the lowest form of agent.

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He's the ministerial agent, the agent that has absolutely no personal interest in the transaction at issue.

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So there's no confusion from the perspective of the third party, whether he's dealing with the agent in his personal capacity or for the principal.

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Right. So it's very interesting that for Casani, the Caliph is so unimportant that it's just a ministerial function.

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And in all cases, as he says.

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It's always the Muslim community that is acting when a judges appointed, it's an action of the Muslim community when a judge is removed.

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It's an action of the Muslim community. It's never an act of the Caliph.

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Happy that. It's just through by the by by means of right, he's just a straw.

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Now know one of the things I want to try to show that this idea is pervasive.

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It's not particular to Casani or crafty or whatever.

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And so here is an extract from a fifth century Maliki work of positive law.

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A top Sadr, the jurist that me, is an important tairawhiti jurist.

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And he's talking about the idea of the rule of law as being obligatory and committed, helping in this right.

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This is a duty to society, by the way. Much is the same thing if you think about.

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And so the ruler has a positive duty to establish a system of rule of law.

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And of course, he can do this personally if he has the capacity right.

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But again. It's qualified by having the capacity to actually establish an effective system of rule of law.

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Practically speaking, that's impossible. So therefore, he has an obligation to delegate to others.

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Power sufficiently to establish a rule of law. Right?

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And then finally, what's I think what's again, what's interesting tying this back to where we started with arbitration?

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What happens if he fails to do that right?

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Or there's no or there's no ruler right, then he says, right, it devolves on those persons having good judgement,

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good character and whosoever they agree is qualified to discharge that obligation.

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They appoint him to the post. Right. So again, here there is this idea that.

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Representing the Muslim community, as I would put it, is.

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Potentially not a stable, it's not stably located in any particular person,

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it's only located in the person that is exercising the legal duty of fulfilling the legal obligation.

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So what makes the rally a rally is that he establishes a rule of law.

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Right? The Ali who does it establish a rule of law is not a body, right?

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So again, you can say this that it's not. Sovereignty is not the right to obedience.

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Obedience is what creates the sovereignty. So, so sovereignty is constituted through the act of obedience, not the other way around.

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OK, so I will stop here. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much, Mohammed.

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That was intriguing. Fascinating as always and nice to read some Arabic on the screen.

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We will come to those questions that viewers may have and please feel free to type

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them up in the Q&A and we will address them in the final half of the broadcast.

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I'd like to invite Lena at this point to give her presentation.

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So Lena is I'm very happy to say of my colleague this year at St. Anthony's College and our colleague,

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Professor Lena, and she's a scholar who specialises in critical theory in relation to law and history,

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using an interdisciplinary, using interdisciplinary and critical methods to us historically graphical and jurisprudential

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questions of Islamic law and Jewish law in the late antique mediaeval and modern errors.

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And the two of you are wonderful to have on the same panel,

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especially because you are both historians with doctorates in that sort of area, but also legal scholars with shades.

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And so I think this will make for a particularly illuminating conversation,

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especially since your approaches, I'm sure, will be dramatically different.

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And so I did want to highlight Nina's very important first book The Beginnings of Islamic ruling late antique Islamic Legal Traditions,

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and which offers a historically grounded understanding of Islamic law.

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She is also very prolific, and I've noticed you've been publishing quite a bit in the last year or year and a half.

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So, you know, really sort of at the cutting edge of a number of different fields, and her publications are available on her academia page.

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So I could go on Lena, but I'm going to at this point, ask you to speak on your sort of topic,

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which is sort of reconsidering the political in pre-modern Islam.

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So thanks for the invitation to participate in the series, I'm looking forward to the discussion.

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Islamic political thought may be the most deeply politicised area of Islamic studies in the global north.

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An inordinate amount of the scholarship revolves around asking the problematic question Can Muslims be politically modern?

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This question motivates research that examines Islam and democracy, or Islam and human rights, or any number of other similar modern political forms.

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Posing the question is incoherent because it is based on a centralisation of being Muslim and of being modern.

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Consequently, attempting to answer this question is an intellectual trap.

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I do not engage with pre-modern Islamic political thought with the objective of answering this false question or its corollaries.

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Instead, I ask different questions and I would suggest, for instance,

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the question How do Muslims in the modern era use the pre-modern Islamic tradition to articulate their politics?

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Rejecting the conventional question also results in discarding conventional answers.

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A primary conventional answer involves serving the ideas of specific Muslims.

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Recent scholarship constructs a canon of modern Muslim political thinkers, including with a lot of duty and more recently, Anousheh.

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This great men approach is a gross distortion because it misrepresents political thought as the product of certain famous men.

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And not coincidentally, this approach reflects the misogyny in the field of Islamic studies.

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Researchers who perpetuate the great men mythology misconstrue these prominent men as

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representative of the Islamic traditions past or present in the present in an empirical sense.

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These figures do not epitomise the entirety of the modern Muslim world or its political thought.

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As for the past, these figures do not embody Islamic continuity.

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Too many researchers view the claims of these specific men as facts rather than as interpretations.

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In addition, much research separates theory from action, which is evident in how political theorists construct this canon of named men,

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while political scientists study Islamist groups of largely unnamed men.

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Both the question Can Muslims be politically modern?

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And the purported answer this is how these famous men view modern Muslim politics are unproductive.

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To understand modern Islamic political thoughtfully, we need different questions and different research.

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Touristic. pre-Modern Islamic political thought can illuminate both alternative questions and restricts.

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So in my comments today, I will begin to address two interrelated issues.

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First, how do we understand political thought in the pre-modern world? And second, how do we find political thought and pre-modern sources?

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Before we can engage with these two questions, we must be clear on our baseline concept.

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So I am using political broadly to mean matters of governance.

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In considering these two issues, I'm building upon the theories and methods I've delineated in my previous scholarship.

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I am not a political theorist, so I engage with pre-modern Islamic political thought through critical theory and Islamic law.

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Critical theory, of course, intersects with political theory, and law is political,

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so all of my scholarship previously has involved dimensions of Islamic political thought.

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So I want to begin by exploring how pre-modern Muslims conceptualise political belonging in legal texts.

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There is a consensus documented in late,

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antique and mediaeval Islamic sources that all three adult and say Muslims are recognised as subject to the charity tax on their wealth.

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pre-Modern Muslim jurists disagreed about the imposition of the charity tax on individuals without legal capacity,

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such as minors and on individuals with questionable legal capacity and property rights, specifically slaves.

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If the late antique Islamic taxation system was based on membership in the polity, then wealth was the key criterion for tax liability.

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If the taxation system was based on belief, then intentionality to perform a ritual act was the key criterion for tax liability,

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mostly at antique legal authorities obligated miners to pay the charity tax.

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Since Muslim miners were not expected to fulfil ritual obligations because they lack intentionality,

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most jurors viewed wealth as a prerequisite for the tax. By comparison,

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most late antique legal authorities did not require slaves to pay the charity tax since Muslim slaves were expected to fulfil ritual obligations.

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Most jurors viewed wealth and political status as prerequisites for the tax.

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Simply put, many leave and antique legal authorities required miners, but not slaves,

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to pay the charity tax because political belonging, rather than belief or intentionality, triggered the obligation to pay.

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The legal reasoning underlining doctrinal rules about charity taxation reflect political thought.

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Many pre-modern Muslim jurists viewed paying the charity tax as enacting Muslim citizenship.

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I follow Elizabeth Cohen and recognising that citizenship is a gradient category and not a binary one.

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Thus, there is a status in between citizens and non-citizens, which Cohen refers to as semi citizens.

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Because these exigencies was from the beginning, it means of taxing those members and quasi members.

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It corresponded to a political framework for defining citizenship and semi citizenship.

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Using the category of citizenship in late antique context is not anachronistic.

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For those of you maybe thinking it is citizenship like state is not a fixed category, but one that has historically specific meanings.

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Consequently, late antique citizenship in a late antique state is distinct from modern citizenship in a modern nation state.

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Moreover, citizenship is widely understood as a category that is applicable in pre-modern contexts.

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So, for example, few people doubt the efficacy of the category of Roman citizenship.

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The fact that Romans review commonly at citizens and Muslims as believers does not reflect

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concrete differences between what it meant to be Roman or Muslim in late antiquity.

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Instead, the tendency to characterise these groups differently reflects modern presumptions that are incongruent with the historical reality.

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Simply put, in late antiquity, being Muslim was a form of citizenship that established political belonging.

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Methodologically, my article taxing citizens social legal constructions of late antique Muslim identity demonstrates

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how we can use a variety of pre-modern sources to reconstruct the political thought of jurists.

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Late antique legal opinions surrounding the payment of the charity tax reveal how juries demarcated who is a Muslim,

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which in a pretty secular world was a political identity. So if we were to tell a macro story about governance in the pre-modern Muslim world,

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that story would narrate the growing power of the state and professionalisation of the state's

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bureaucratic apparatus because of the process of professionalisation was gradual and incremental.

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The late antique period provides historical evidence for styles of governance that did not continue.

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For instance, rulers during the late antique period played a larger role in interpreting and declaring Islamic law than rulers in successive periods.

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Obviously, Muhammad passed judgements over the first Muslim community in both Mecca and Medina.

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Likewise, the caliphs who succeeded him were not merely political leaders because they promulgated laws and shaped normative legal practises.

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There aren't numerous legal opinions associated with each individual Caliph and Caliph.

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Omar is even known to have dismissed judges for implementing substantive legal decisions that differed from his legal opinions.

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Many were made, caliphs had some legal knowledge and were involved in the everyday practise of law.

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So, for example, there's historical evidence that early on they had caliphs held their own courts,

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offered judges their legal opinions, tested judicial knowledge and dictated court procedural rules.

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Notably, the relationship between and caliphs and American judges was not exclusively hierarchical.

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So, for example, a modern judge ruled against the governor of Medina, No.

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One. Thus, there was competition interaction and overlap between rulers, judges, jurists and other bureaucrats.

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We need to recognise and understand this historical evidence because it corrects a prevalent romanticisation of pre-modern Islamic governance.

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According to this idealistic projection, pre-modern Muslim jurists were entirely independent of the state.

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This is simply is inaccurate. As I've explained elsewhere, states have been involved in the shaping of Islamic law from the beginning.

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Despite the aspirations of pre-modern jurists, rulers endorsed legal schools,

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appointed judges and had other broad scale influences on the shape and substance of Islamic law.

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Of course, the modern nation state usurped the power of the jurists more extensively,

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but it was not the first form of governance to compete with jurists.

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Moreover, the romanticised narrative is a projection of European history and Eurocentric concepts that is,

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many scholars and plot their narratives of Islamic history in imitation of a European history of church versus state conflict.

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The church is represented as the road map and untranslated term that distorts the complex relationships amongst different types of scholars,

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jurists, judges and other bureaucrats. This is another example of an untranslated term masking secular assumptions.

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The phenomenon that I identified in my article decolonial translation There are many implications

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for imposing a European model of church vs. state controversy in pre-modern stomach history.

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I'm only going to mention two here. First, much recent scholarship treat scholars like church clergy.

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And as a result, the scholarship conflates the Islamic tradition with the orthodoxy of a select group of scholars.

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However, Muslim jurists and scholars are not the functional equivalent of clergy.

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There was no church institution in pre-modern Islamic history, and scholars did not operate in a hierarchical structure.

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Second, this Eurocentric misreading of Islamic history leads to the mistaken classification

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of the pre-modern Islamic State as external to the Islamic tradition.

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In reality, rulers and scholars were competing groups within the Islamic tradition.

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So as we saw with the first historical example,

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an obligatory state imposed tax that derives its legal validity from the Koran confuses modern legal categories.

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The pre-modern Islamic charity tax does not correspond to the modern bifurcation between religion and the secular.

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pre-Modern citizenship did not recognise a notion of religion.

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As we saw with the second historical example, the competition interaction and overlap between rulers,

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judges and jurists defy modern governance is centralisation.

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Conventional scholarship focuses on the scholarly class in ways that I described as a secular translation of the Islamic tradition.

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pre-Modern Islamic governance does not correspond to the secular bifurcation between church and state.

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So when contemporary scholars research pre-modern Islamic political thought,

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they frequently limit themselves to dimensions of the Islamic tradition that the contemporary scholar understands is political,

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rather than to the dimensions of the tradition that pre-modern Muslims understood as political.

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So this is not simply a matter of anachronism. pre-Modern political thought was not secular with these two brief historical examples.

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I illustrated how secular political thought distorts pre-modern Islamic political thought.

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It is important to keep in mind that how one understands pre-modern Islamic

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political thought has direct implications for modern Islamic political thought.

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Secular ideology constructs a problem space in which the secular, modern nation state is constantly demarcating a line between politics and religion.

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This is not a line that can be drawn empirically.

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It is a line that the modern nation state draws and moves in accordance with its particular material and ideological objectives.

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So put differently, the modern nation state differentiates between two secular notions secular politics and religion,

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because it serves its interests to do so. Secular ideology advocates certain political doctrines.

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First, secular ideology seeks to concentrate power in the institutions of the modern nation state,

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and some of my previous scholarship have demonstrated both.

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How secular ideology defines religion is the non secular and how this secular notion of religion models the pre-modern Islamic tradition.

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One secular ideology falsely demarcate certain aspects of social life a separate and distinguishable.

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It alters interrelated spheres such as ethics and politics.

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Second, secular ideology asserts that law can only be positive law because the state seeks to maintain power through a unique vocal state law.

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The secular notions of religion and positive law distort Islamic politics.

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Now, in my experience, the historical theoretical arguments that underlie the critique of secularism cannot be explained in a short talk.

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Understanding the critique necessitates extensive reading in the history of secularism and the genealogy of religion.

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That is the modern history of secularism, because that's the key issue.

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So rather than continuing to explain this critique of secular political thought,

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I just want to suggest the readings identified on the slide and move on.

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So when I began this talk,

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I asserted that much recent scholarship is motivated by asking the problematic question Can Muslims engage in modern politics?

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I want to return now to the question I posed as an alternative.

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How do Muslims in the modern era use the pre-modern Islamic tradition to articulate their politics, as is common in similar contexts?

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When contemporary individuals look to the pre-modern past, they see it through the lens of contemporary ideas and concerns.

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Consequently, many prevalent assumptions about Islam's past are reflective of Islam's present.

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This is not unique, of course, to have some contemporary Islamists, though,

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and the scholars who study them frequently rely on a set of false assumptions about pre-modern Islamic political thought.

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And I presented two historical examples. Muslim belonging and the relationship between jurists and the ruler that defy conventional assumptions.

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In addition, contemporary Muslims often make claims of authenticity or returning to the past.

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That should be challenged because neither authenticity nor return are possible.

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In many cases, instead of authenticity or return, we find hybridity in the specific case of modern Islamic political thought.

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We find what I have called secular Islamization.

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Secular Islamization is evident in how some Islamist groups adopt a modern secular notion of religion and imitate secular,

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legal and political reasoning. I analogise this process to the placing of Islamic vocabulary in secular political sentences.

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This is, of course, again not unique to the Islamic tradition. I hope that it is clear by now that what underlies the conventional question about the

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possibility of Muslims engaging in modern politics is another ineffective question.

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Can Muslims be secular? As I've demonstrated elsewhere, this question motivates much scholarship in Islamic studies today.

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It is an analytically confused question because Islam and secularism are not mutually exclusive.

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It is a misleading question because it directs attention towards a circular path enclosed

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within secular ideology in order to reconsider the political in the Islamic tradition.

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We must recognise that secular political thought is neither trends historical nor transcultural.

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Thank you. Fantastic, thank you very much.

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Thank you, Mohammed. I think, you know, we really have to wonderfully rich papers which talk both to each other and in some ways against one another.

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So we are open for questions of members of the audience can write in their questions and the Q&A box or the chat box or raise their hands.

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And Osama and I obviously will also ask questions, and I just have a couple to begin with one.

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The one place where these two papers meet seems to be the claim,

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a very interesting claim about the non-linear nature of authority, and this can go in so many different places.

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So I just want to ask both of you, each of you, about that.

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For Mohammed, the fact that there seems to be no real hierarchy in which appeals can be taken from one from a,

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you know, a subordinate authority to a superior one.

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Do you think that suggests that? Sovereignty, as you define it, is fragmented because it is divided by the field that each authority encompasses.

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You mentioned, for instance, how the Caliph can take on the role of authorities who are normally seen as subordinate to him,

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and in this way his own authority gets to be divisible in feels like ways.

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Is that one way in which you might think about what appears to be a fragmented form of sovereignty?

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Perhaps another way of putting it as a.

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The Muslim community, as the residual ground of this sovereignty is unable to manifest itself apart from in these varying authorities.

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You also said something about the distinction between.

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Insofar as justice or legitimacy is crucial to the acknowledgement of the sovereignty of any authority.

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It seems to be more a kind of, if you will, ethical or even a philosophical principle rather than the law.

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So three bits of questions which join together and then leader, if I might just ask you again,

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this category of the non-linear nature, I think, is, you know, it's really, as I said, it can go in so many different places.

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And I just wanted to ask whether without seeing it as being anarchistic in any way, it would be interesting if it were anarchistic.

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You know how you might think about. The anti hierarchical or the non-hierarchical nature of of authority and then you dissent with your first example,

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which had to do with property, how you might. Could you say something more about how property or ownership or wealth?

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Ends up configuring citizenship. In a way that.

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That has not really been taken into account, as far as I know in the scholarship on on Islamic politics, I find that.

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A really just a way of thinking,

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because it might allow you to approach sort of European political theory and its fixation on property in a quite different way.

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So, you know, your critical endeavour addresses not just the question of circularity, which you rightly brought up,

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but also that of ownership and property, which defined so much of early modern and modern political thought in Europe.

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So sorry, rather shaggy dog questions. Mohammed, perhaps you can begin.

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Yeah. I mean, I think I wouldn't necessarily say non-linear.

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That's not how I would describe it. What I would describe it as.

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Shared sovereignty and sovereignty is shared throughout the community through all these different offices that these are coordinate offices,

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each exercising a particular slice of sovereignty.

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But that sovereignty is real in the sense that it doesn't depend for its vigour on the approval of the appointing authority.

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Because the appointing authority is a sort of like the Caliph isn't appointing the judge in the way that I appoint somebody to build the deck for me.

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Right. This is the point of Casady, Casani is saying.

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Is acting as a messenger of the community to fulfil this function of discharging the rule of law.

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Right. And so that's a real sovereign function that now exists in the judge.

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And so when the judge exercises that lawfully,

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then that's that's just that that's a full act of sovereignty not dependent on the caliphs will in any sort of way.

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Right. Likewise, the Caliph has personal capacity to adjudicate these disputes, but that's not because he's superior.

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It's because he's he's taking on the trappings of being a judge in some sense,

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he's descending to the level of a judge when he wishes to do that right.

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And so I think what's I mean, I'm approaching this mainly from a perspective of a kind of liberal legal theorist here.

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I know I like I have to get that in, get lively, not upset with me, but my point is to try to say that in so many.

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Jurors juridical thinking the law constitutes sovereignty.

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Sovereignty is not above the law, the way some sort of crude Australians would would view it.

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So you have an unconstrained sovereign, the unconstrained commander. That's not the idea of Sunni sovereignty.

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The idea of Sunni sovereignty is manifested through through conformity with law, right?

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Not. Being above it, that's that's sort of the the really essential point,

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that's what allows for sovereignty to be shared across all these different offices and have a residual existence in the community members.

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So for example, if the Noujaim was a 16th century Egyptian hammer who has a very interesting epistle about what happens when the governor?

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And when they when the governor dies. Right?

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And the sultan and his son, who has not sent a replacement yet.

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Who takes over? Right? Is it the commander of the garrison or is it the chief judge?

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Right. And it goes back to again,

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this idea really gets to sort of the idea of the exception what happens when there's an exception to the regular constitutional order?

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That's why you see the real sovereign rights, right? And the real sovereign arises, as you know, as Lakshmi says and as James says,

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it's back in the community, although in the NEJM chain is very clear, is the judge.

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It should go back to the the public to elect somebody new.

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The judge should exercise sovereign powers until such time as this full time consent to such a governor.

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But my general approach is to look at the details of the rules of the law, jurisdictional and procedural to understand how sovereignty and a sense of.

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Final decision making is normal to be constructive, right?

391
00:43:33,300 --> 00:43:45,550
Thanks very much, ma'am. The issue of delegation here, because it seems to the endless everyone is a delegate and the sovereign cannot be manifested.

392
00:43:45,550 --> 00:43:53,290
Anyway, turning to you, Linda, and then I noticed we have questions in the chat as well, and I'm sure Osama has some.

393
00:43:53,290 --> 00:43:59,590
Yeah. Rachel thinks I think that you picked up exactly on what I was thinking is where the overlap is between our two presentations,

394
00:43:59,590 --> 00:44:05,560
which is this understanding of the pre-modern context is being one in which authority

395
00:44:05,560 --> 00:44:10,720
or if you want to call it sovereignty is more horizontal and but also more shifting.

396
00:44:10,720 --> 00:44:17,980
And so it's not a simple, linear vertical relationship between the sovereign and the states bureaucratic

397
00:44:17,980 --> 00:44:26,200
apparatus that people would understand in the modern nation state framework. So I agree totally with them that presentation on those points.

398
00:44:26,200 --> 00:44:32,080
You didn't talk that much about liberal things today, so actually there wasn't a lot to disagree.

399
00:44:32,080 --> 00:44:36,370
You didn't bring up Rawls for the first time in a long time. So.

400
00:44:36,370 --> 00:44:41,270
So so far, we've been great. But on the second question, the citizenship issue.

401
00:44:41,270 --> 00:44:47,620
So the parts of the things I discussed about citizenship was based on this article that I published a few years ago on taxing citizens.

402
00:44:47,620 --> 00:44:51,900
And really, the first criterion is political status. It's not wealth.

403
00:44:51,900 --> 00:44:58,390
Well, the only come. So I wouldn't use the concept of property and all of the modern concepts related to it,

404
00:44:58,390 --> 00:45:04,840
because property is only secondary to the issue as to whether or not you're liable to pay the tax.

405
00:45:04,840 --> 00:45:12,550
And so the liability to pay the tax is a place where you can see how the jurors are and I believe, constructing political membership.

406
00:45:12,550 --> 00:45:23,950
And the reason why this is significant is because it will be seen as the framework for how we understand non-Muslims in the Islamic Empire.

407
00:45:23,950 --> 00:45:28,210
So it's not only about what it tells us about political belonging of Muslims,

408
00:45:28,210 --> 00:45:32,650
but also what it says about the semi citizens, these non-Muslims and what their status is.

409
00:45:32,650 --> 00:45:37,840
And the moment you stop sort of projecting these religious ideas that come from

410
00:45:37,840 --> 00:45:42,970
modern secular notions and then rethink governance in terms of citizenship status,

411
00:45:42,970 --> 00:45:50,050
then everything looks very different. But it also looks more historically contextual, which is the point of the Roman citizenship comparison,

412
00:45:50,050 --> 00:45:54,520
because the poll tax is, as we know, was very common in the Roman Empire.

413
00:45:54,520 --> 00:46:04,720
So it's not as if any of these policies that we see in the Islamic Empire vis-a-vis defining citizenship were somehow unique to the Islamic Empire.

414
00:46:04,720 --> 00:46:08,860
And so that's why I emphasise thanks for the question.

415
00:46:08,860 --> 00:46:17,200
Thanks very much. Osama. So I'm tempted to let the attendees go first, if that's all right, Faisal.

416
00:46:17,200 --> 00:46:22,540
And I mean, I know that I'm going to put his hand up melodica. And then we had two questions.

417
00:46:22,540 --> 00:46:27,730
Oh, I see. Oh yes, we have had a heads up as well. So shall we? I don't know which one came first.

418
00:46:27,730 --> 00:46:32,020
Ahmed Silex hand was up earlier, and so I met.

419
00:46:32,020 --> 00:46:43,180
If you want to make yourself visible and ask your question. First, I would like to say thank you both because it was a wonderful programme event.

420
00:46:43,180 --> 00:46:44,400
My name is Ahmet Gennych.

421
00:46:44,400 --> 00:46:54,010
I think he's an roasty in religion parliament, and I work on my dissertation currently on actually the title of my dissertation,

422
00:46:54,010 --> 00:47:01,510
his traces of sovereignty, multiple multiple political layers of Islamic political thought, particularly.

423
00:47:01,510 --> 00:47:12,770
I focus on Al-Marayati al-Husseini, and as part of my question, I have two question actually one to Mohammad father, the as you know,

424
00:47:12,770 --> 00:47:17,830
and my first question is that based on your presentation,

425
00:47:17,830 --> 00:47:31,420
what I understood is that actually the sovereign power of any kind of ruler is grounded on the law,

426
00:47:31,420 --> 00:47:37,840
the Shariah and this Shariah, as when I look at my work and Dulaimi,

427
00:47:37,840 --> 00:47:49,120
especially as it's very clear when he says that Islamic polity and Islamic community is possible and can survive when even there is no ruler,

428
00:47:49,120 --> 00:47:55,330
there is no government, when even there is no Khalifa or emir or rhali.

429
00:47:55,330 --> 00:47:56,680
So Khomeini can survive.

430
00:47:56,680 --> 00:48:04,120
And he said that the mujahideen, then the mufti and the scholar should take care of the rulership leadership in the same community.

431
00:48:04,120 --> 00:48:14,590
So from here and from what you have said, what I understand is that the foundation of Islamic political thought is the common ground,

432
00:48:14,590 --> 00:48:21,730
or, let's say, epistemic and moral ground accepted, embraced by the community.

433
00:48:21,730 --> 00:48:27,810
In other words, it is the will and the consent of the community.

434
00:48:27,810 --> 00:48:40,840
And their agreement on certain epistemic way of looking at the world is the foundation of Islamic political thought and Islamic sovereignty.

435
00:48:40,840 --> 00:48:45,900
Would you agree with that or what do you think about that? Would you like me to go to the discussion?

436
00:48:45,900 --> 00:48:50,970
You can be quite concise with Nina's question just so that everyone gets a chance.

437
00:48:50,970 --> 00:48:59,790
Yeah, sure. Just from afar, the what I read is that actually unlike secular politics,

438
00:48:59,790 --> 00:49:09,540
especially as you emphasise the church versus state in Islamic tradition, religion, which is metaphysical ontological assumptions.

439
00:49:09,540 --> 00:49:19,170
Religion is a kind of mediator between politics, power and community and people.

440
00:49:19,170 --> 00:49:26,490
So it's quite not opposite, but so different than the European historical experience.

441
00:49:26,490 --> 00:49:36,420
Would you agree with this role of religion, like mediation between politics and political elites and people and community?

442
00:49:36,420 --> 00:49:42,090
Thank you so much. Thank you very much for your question. So I thank you for your question.

443
00:49:42,090 --> 00:49:45,570
I think what you said I largely agree with,

444
00:49:45,570 --> 00:49:51,630
I'm going to point out that a friend of mine adopted Majid wrote a very and just published

445
00:49:51,630 --> 00:49:55,920
a very interesting paper about UAE in the European Journal of Political Philosophy,

446
00:49:55,920 --> 00:50:01,470
I believe, which talks about UAE and the exception in Islamic political thought.

447
00:50:01,470 --> 00:50:06,490
And I think he uses the concept of the common sense sovereign.

448
00:50:06,490 --> 00:50:17,560
As sort of as sort of Giuliani, his ultimate account for how Islam survives in the absence of an organised state,

449
00:50:17,560 --> 00:50:25,150
that there there's this idea of the sovereignty of the average person to understand the basic

450
00:50:25,150 --> 00:50:31,540
requirements of all of the law and that it can survive through that common sense sovereign.

451
00:50:31,540 --> 00:50:35,230
Now, I think this is actually a really important theme.

452
00:50:35,230 --> 00:50:45,340
It's something I've talked about on other occasions that you see in Khazali, although bizarrely, you know, he he's very protean himself.

453
00:50:45,340 --> 00:50:53,200
But in this argument that he makes in the context of defending the [INAUDIBLE] against the claims of the Israelis,

454
00:50:53,200 --> 00:51:03,710
he he resorts to this idea of a common sense law firm saying that the Israelis claim you need to have this impeccable imam.

455
00:51:03,710 --> 00:51:09,500
In order to live a life pleasing to God and go, Karzai says, no, you don't.

456
00:51:09,500 --> 00:51:18,230
All you need is to have, you know, a basic sense of moral moral uprightness, not perfection.

457
00:51:18,230 --> 00:51:22,460
And then you can study the law and live reasonably by it.

458
00:51:22,460 --> 00:51:29,960
You don't need an impeccable man. You just sort of need sort of kind of what I call tongue in cheek, adequate amount of virtue.

459
00:51:29,960 --> 00:51:34,550
You don't need to have a sort of a perfect or superhero super heroic amount of virtue.

460
00:51:34,550 --> 00:51:42,050
Adequate virtue is more than enough and adequate virtue is present amongst any sort of normal community of human beings.

461
00:51:42,050 --> 00:51:49,790
And so that that has its own assumptions about human nature and about God and about what God demands of people.

462
00:51:49,790 --> 00:51:59,600
And, you know, just to rock back, go back to my presentation. It's interesting that when Malik talks about the legitimacy of decisions of arbitrators,

463
00:51:59,600 --> 00:52:05,390
rulers or whatever, he doesn't talk about them being correct in their decisions.

464
00:52:05,390 --> 00:52:09,830
All he says is that their decisions should not be manifestly unjust.

465
00:52:09,830 --> 00:52:19,830
Right? So it's the same kind of idea. Again, tongue in cheek, I talk about Sunni political thought as a republic of adequate virtue.

466
00:52:19,830 --> 00:52:25,860
Right. That's sort of that that doesn't gerada adequate virtue, not not anything more,

467
00:52:25,860 --> 00:52:37,290
but the belief that human beings are capable of achieving that level, you know, on their own, essentially in a post world.

468
00:52:37,290 --> 00:52:42,690
This reminds me of Patricia Cronus remark about cynicism, about being, you know,

469
00:52:42,690 --> 00:52:50,970
let's just let's just do the best that we can kind of being the ethos of Sunni political thought, almost.

470
00:52:50,970 --> 00:52:57,450
But I wanted to hand over to Lina, you had a question directed towards you.

471
00:52:57,450 --> 00:53:02,850
You have question directed towards you in the Q&A, so please feel free to we'll get to that in just a moment as well.

472
00:53:02,850 --> 00:53:10,500
OK, so thanks Ahmed, for your for your question. I wouldn't use the word religion to describe anything in pre-modern Islam.

473
00:53:10,500 --> 00:53:21,090
I use the word tradition. So did Muslims, in the pre-modern context, think that the tradition was a way of mediating between community and politics?

474
00:53:21,090 --> 00:53:25,830
Yes, absolutely. I don't think that that's a stretch of the imagination.

475
00:53:25,830 --> 00:53:30,930
So that that's an easy answer, basically. Do you want me to answer the next question?

476
00:53:30,930 --> 00:53:33,270
I saw it. You mean Alex Hanley's question?

477
00:53:33,270 --> 00:53:40,200
Okay, so and I also wanted to point out, I mean, a number of your interlocutors for both of you are in the call or the people.

478
00:53:40,200 --> 00:53:43,660
I mean, in the sense of even Noujaim has mentioned some,

479
00:53:43,660 --> 00:53:51,270
you use the question of religion that comes up with Alex is also something that Russia and best he's talked about.

480
00:53:51,270 --> 00:53:56,430
He's in the Andrew. Much is obviously sort of for sovereignty and in the modern period.

481
00:53:56,430 --> 00:53:58,200
So I think there's.

482
00:53:58,200 --> 00:54:08,090
I just want to welcome our colleagues and say that if you'd like to interject as well, I'm sure Lina and Mohammed will be more than happy here.

483
00:54:08,090 --> 00:54:12,690
Lena, do you want me to read the question only just so that you can respond to it?

484
00:54:12,690 --> 00:54:15,060
I can read it. It's 15. Please do so.

485
00:54:15,060 --> 00:54:20,280
If religion is a problematic category for pre-modern history because it is a modern secular invention, what about politics?

486
00:54:20,280 --> 00:54:23,520
Do you think there may be problems with talking about Islamic politics? So.

487
00:54:23,520 --> 00:54:30,900
Timothy Fitzgerald very famously has written about this issue, and he rejects the category of politics for these reasons.

488
00:54:30,900 --> 00:54:37,410
This is why, though I disagree with him about this, and this is why I gave a definition of politics as being matters of governance.

489
00:54:37,410 --> 00:54:42,000
So I gave you a trans historical, trans cultural definition of politics,

490
00:54:42,000 --> 00:54:48,750
not an essentialist one, but one that is that functions basically across time and place.

491
00:54:48,750 --> 00:54:55,320
And I made a distinction between secular politics and politics writ large.

492
00:54:55,320 --> 00:55:02,340
And what I said very specifically is that it's secular politics that distorts understandings of pre-modern Islamic political thought.

493
00:55:02,340 --> 00:55:07,380
So I don't have a problem with the category of politics itself.

494
00:55:07,380 --> 00:55:15,030
Can I if basically allow me to as well if I can just sort of pick up on the point that you've just made, Lina?

495
00:55:15,030 --> 00:55:22,110
I mean, do you have any thoughts on using categories that are indigenous to a tradition like Dean and saying

496
00:55:22,110 --> 00:55:28,470
that this is close enough to influence our understanding of how we should conceptualise religion?

497
00:55:28,470 --> 00:55:35,340
Kind of what Russian Embassy has done in his work as something akin to what I'm trying to do in Detroit as well.

498
00:55:35,340 --> 00:55:41,520
My article, decolonial translation, explains why the translation of Dean as religion is wrong,

499
00:55:41,520 --> 00:55:47,400
and it didn't begin until the modern era, and the usage of the word was understood to mean tradition or law.

500
00:55:47,400 --> 00:55:52,440
We can see this in translations of the Koran into Latin, into other European languages.

501
00:55:52,440 --> 00:55:56,190
In the middle people era was the word religion was not used.

502
00:55:56,190 --> 00:56:03,570
More importantly, the word religion. The concept of religion is a modern concept and is defined by second or ideology, which is a modern concept.

503
00:56:03,570 --> 00:56:10,380
So I've explained this in many articles, so I don't really want to go into this issue again.

504
00:56:10,380 --> 00:56:14,700
It's important for us to differentiate between concepts that are trans,

505
00:56:14,700 --> 00:56:20,070
historical and trans cultural and concepts that are actually modern and Eurocentric.

506
00:56:20,070 --> 00:56:25,920
And for me, having studied the history of secularism and the genealogy of religion,

507
00:56:25,920 --> 00:56:33,730
I find it difficult to believe that anyone would take the word religion and think that that can somehow be trans, historical and trans cultural.

508
00:56:33,730 --> 00:56:41,370
When there is an enormous amount of scholarship by very good scholars showing that the word religion, the concept of religion, not the word,

509
00:56:41,370 --> 00:56:46,710
because there's a difference between terms and concepts, but that the concept of religion can somehow be found in pre-modern texts.

510
00:56:46,710 --> 00:56:50,520
It cannot. But that's really not the point of today's discussion.

511
00:56:50,520 --> 00:56:57,370
So I would just say read my decolonial translation article and my blog post on Europe's centrism of secularism.

512
00:56:57,370 --> 00:57:04,950
Hey, can I just add, please? I'm just going to gently disagree with with Lina, and I don't want I don't want this to go off the rails about this.

513
00:57:04,950 --> 00:57:07,220
I don't know. But this is why we disagree.

514
00:57:07,220 --> 00:57:12,490
I know we disagree with this, but I'm just going to just throw this out there for just for the benefit of others.

515
00:57:12,490 --> 00:57:21,360
Since this, this this came up. I think Jeffrey Stout has a very interesting series of lectures that he gave at a British university.

516
00:57:21,360 --> 00:57:25,960
I think the Gifford lectures on natural religion.

517
00:57:25,960 --> 00:57:33,180
This a series of lectures on natural religion where he certainly gives an alternative genealogy of the term religion,

518
00:57:33,180 --> 00:57:37,560
and he makes a distinction between religion and faith.

519
00:57:37,560 --> 00:57:44,360
And he identifies the idea of faith as being born in in that sort of.

520
00:57:44,360 --> 00:57:51,740
As being a particularly Protestant Reformation idea, which he says is a very distinct idea from religion.

521
00:57:51,740 --> 00:58:00,230
And he says religion, you find could go back to. Roman authors like Cicero, and that religion is just considered a virtue.

522
00:58:00,230 --> 00:58:10,760
That, you know, and even mediaeval writers prior to the Reformation recognise religion as a kind of civic virtue that is not particular to creed.

523
00:58:10,760 --> 00:58:15,890
Right? It's the Protestant Reformation that introduces this new idea of faith,

524
00:58:15,890 --> 00:58:23,660
which is sort of irrationally tied to conscious that the hands sort of the radical transformation of these things.

525
00:58:23,660 --> 00:58:27,620
Now I want one one final point in the Islamic context because, you know,

526
00:58:27,620 --> 00:58:35,270
I read I read Lena's essay very carefully to Hamdi and his definition of it in his encyclopaedic a chef.

527
00:58:35,270 --> 00:58:41,570
It's a lot of notes in his definition of in one of the definitions he mentioned is it?

528
00:58:41,570 --> 00:58:45,530
So it's not just it's not just law, it's not just practise.

529
00:58:45,530 --> 00:58:49,070
It's also subjective beliefs. But I don't want to go into all of this.

530
00:58:49,070 --> 00:58:54,770
I never denied that. But that's not the point. The point is whether you can divide those into separate categories.

531
00:58:54,770 --> 00:59:00,800
And it's the division that is modern and Eurocentric and a result of secularism didn't exist.

532
00:59:00,800 --> 00:59:06,590
A secular ideology. Any case, I don't want to get to that.

533
00:59:06,590 --> 00:59:12,520
Well, before you sort of muse, I'm going to direct the next question at you.

534
00:59:12,520 --> 00:59:16,040
OK, I come back to my own questions for both of you.

535
00:59:16,040 --> 00:59:20,930
But and if you have further questions, please feel free to jump in.

536
00:59:20,930 --> 00:59:24,590
So an anonymous attendee in this case, same professor father mentioned.

537
00:59:24,590 --> 00:59:32,240
I mentioned how pre-modern governance was suffering because of its ability to establish rule of law as opposed to vice versa.

538
00:59:32,240 --> 00:59:36,020
Does he liken that to modern the modern state in that regard?

539
00:59:36,020 --> 00:59:42,260
Postcolonial scholarship argues that the modern state typically establishes sovereignty by a monopoly of violence.

540
00:59:42,260 --> 00:59:46,100
How is that contrasted or likened to pre-modern Islamic governance?

541
00:59:46,100 --> 00:59:56,760
Well, you know, if you look at somebody like Mayawati. And his description of the incidents to the contract of the caliphate.

542
00:59:56,760 --> 01:00:06,220
He notes that having a monopoly over coercion more or less is a is a necessary incident of the contract.

543
01:00:06,220 --> 01:00:08,370
Now he doesn't use that phrase.

544
01:00:08,370 --> 01:00:20,980
What he says is that in contracting the caliphate, we agree to divest ourselves of the ability of enforcing the law, right?

545
01:00:20,980 --> 01:00:28,380
And so there is a distinct crime in Islamic law called IFTTT. Which more or less can be translated as vigilantism?

546
01:00:28,380 --> 01:00:33,570
Right? So again, but it's complicated because in some cases,

547
01:00:33,570 --> 01:00:40,500
jurist permits permit self-help if it can be done without a risk of violence where there is a

548
01:00:40,500 --> 01:00:46,020
risk of violence and it's forbidden and it can be punished even if it's substantively correct.

549
01:00:46,020 --> 01:00:51,300
So if you look at chapters on retaliation, the source right,

550
01:00:51,300 --> 01:00:57,720
at least the molecules are quite clear that you might have a lawful entitlement to exact vengeance on someone,

551
01:00:57,720 --> 01:01:02,190
but you can't do it until the person is actually convicted and you get permission of the ruler.

552
01:01:02,190 --> 01:01:14,730
Otherwise, you've committed a crime, right? So there is this idea that the state has a particular claim to rightful use of coercion, right?

553
01:01:14,730 --> 01:01:19,970
And that that's a necessary incident of sovereignty. But that's not the whole of it, right?

554
01:01:19,970 --> 01:01:25,190
Because it's got to be used in a lawful way. Right.

555
01:01:25,190 --> 01:01:34,240
And I mean, this would seem to make a fair amount of sense within the the logic of any kind of political enterprise or

556
01:01:34,240 --> 01:01:42,790
state enterprise that you if once you sort of like distribute those final decision making opportunities,

557
01:01:42,790 --> 01:01:50,560
you've distributed sovereignty to an extent that may, you know, begin to divide the identity of the state to a citizen.

558
01:01:50,560 --> 01:01:52,420
I don't know if you would agree with that,

559
01:01:52,420 --> 01:02:02,020
but it would seem that what we talk about is the monopoly of violence is something that is very much detectable within an Islamic law.

560
01:02:02,020 --> 01:02:05,920
Well, I think what I would say in terms of dividing the and the identity of the state.

561
01:02:05,920 --> 01:02:11,050
I think the whole point of cut off his book is to show why that's not the case,

562
01:02:11,050 --> 01:02:18,790
because when people are actually exercising genuine sovereign authority, that means everybody else has to recognise it, right?

563
01:02:18,790 --> 01:02:22,570
And so when and this is at the highest level on the lowest level.

564
01:02:22,570 --> 01:02:31,510
So when the tax collector collects taxes and that decision is viewed as a valid exercise of sovereign power,

565
01:02:31,510 --> 01:02:36,910
then everybody else in the community has to recognise it and can't contests it on the ground.

566
01:02:36,910 --> 01:02:41,260
Well, I disagree with your interpretation of tax law, for example, right?

567
01:02:41,260 --> 01:02:48,420
And so despite the fact that sovereignty is distributed because it is sovereign.

568
01:02:48,420 --> 01:02:52,740
There's unity and universal recognition. At least according to the Karate.

569
01:02:52,740 --> 01:03:00,300
That's the whole point of of of giving it the legal authority of sovereignty, because now everybody is compelled to recognise it as final.

570
01:03:00,300 --> 01:03:04,500
Even if you disagree with it, that's what it means to have a sovereign authority.

571
01:03:04,500 --> 01:03:11,920
Your decision is recognised as valid and binding on everybody else. Thank you.

572
01:03:11,920 --> 01:03:18,520
So if you would like to ask anything, please feel free, but no, I you know, I was just reminded of some of, you know,

573
01:03:18,520 --> 01:03:30,430
a previous seminar in which leading you are very right made the argument that sovereignty was impersonal in pre-modern Islam,

574
01:03:30,430 --> 01:03:33,880
which seems to align with what Mohammed has said. But. Right.

575
01:03:33,880 --> 01:03:42,510
She also went further. You will recall to suggest that which I thought was very interesting that.

576
01:03:42,510 --> 01:03:50,790
What are the implications of this in personality? Had to do with the fact that even the offices.

577
01:03:50,790 --> 01:03:53,460
That can be variously sovereign and mammoth, as mentioned,

578
01:03:53,460 --> 01:04:02,520
the world may not be able to encompass the idea of it so that it is always possible for any individual

579
01:04:02,520 --> 01:04:13,620
to lay claim to a sovereign act in the absence of the of the action of the authorities concerned.

580
01:04:13,620 --> 01:04:22,530
And so I wanted to ask both Muhammad and Lina actually what room they see existing for.

581
01:04:22,530 --> 01:04:24,390
We don't have to use the term sovereignty.

582
01:04:24,390 --> 01:04:38,340
We can use, you know, authority political authority outside the designated offices of the Imam Wali, etc., Caliph Sultan.

583
01:04:38,340 --> 01:04:50,740
And this brings me back to my early, somewhat in jest, in a way suggestive of an anarchistic mode of politics.

584
01:04:50,740 --> 01:04:55,770
It has to it is impossible to think about legal,

585
01:04:55,770 --> 01:05:05,510
legitimate but not necessarily legal forms of either sovereignty or authority in this pre-modern world.

586
01:05:05,510 --> 01:05:10,580
Go ahead. Mm hmm. Well, I thought it was fair for you first.

587
01:05:10,580 --> 01:05:17,030
You know, I think this is what actually makes solid political thought very modern.

588
01:05:17,030 --> 01:05:22,550
So Martin Laughlin that in England I can I think he's at King's College London.

589
01:05:22,550 --> 01:05:25,340
He's a political theorist through constitutional affairs.

590
01:05:25,340 --> 01:05:30,770
He points out that it's an essential attribute of modern sovereignty, that it's always contestable.

591
01:05:30,770 --> 01:05:35,270
That's what makes it modern because it's based on a principle of legitimacy that is always contestable.

592
01:05:35,270 --> 01:05:47,480
And that is what gives Sunni political theory credible instability because it's always possible to challenge it as being unlawfully exercised.

593
01:05:47,480 --> 01:05:49,430
So a jurist that you know,

594
01:05:49,430 --> 01:05:57,380
I've read a lot when I was studying Maliki fifth in 18th century Maliki named after the dictator who was a very prominent Sufi,

595
01:05:57,380 --> 01:06:02,960
he is extremely anti ottoman. I mean, it's kind of shocking how anti-sodomy he is.

596
01:06:02,960 --> 01:06:12,980
He he in many of his many passages in his work, he says, You know, these are the rules that apply if there is a vacuum, right?

597
01:06:12,980 --> 01:06:18,200
But there isn't a hack and Sharia law in Egypt, right? And so this sort devolves.

598
01:06:18,200 --> 01:06:25,090
So this is the rule that applies, right? And so, yeah, I think.

599
01:06:25,090 --> 01:06:33,640
The other commentator is absolutely right that there is always this potential for someone to claim sovereignty because,

600
01:06:33,640 --> 01:06:38,500
as I said, the sovereign is immaterial, it's the Muslim community. That's an idea.

601
01:06:38,500 --> 01:06:42,190
It's not embodied in any person. No person can claim to embody it.

602
01:06:42,190 --> 01:06:45,920
Now one thing that I would just want to clear clarify this is only one tradition.

603
01:06:45,920 --> 01:06:53,260
This is the juridical tradition. The juridical tradition is impersonal, but at the same time, particularly after the Mongol invasion,

604
01:06:53,260 --> 01:07:02,380
you have a completely different ideas of political legitimacy that are coming from Central Asia that are very personalised, right?

605
01:07:02,380 --> 01:07:10,240
And I think the Ottomans have a lot of sort of schizophrenia and they're, you know, they're they're they're legitimate.

606
01:07:10,240 --> 01:07:14,560
The tactics of modern legitimation they employ. Right?

607
01:07:14,560 --> 01:07:18,970
Hussein Yilmaz, who's in the audience, was one of our speakers who, you know,

608
01:07:18,970 --> 01:07:25,240
spoke precisely to this, you know, the Ottoman claiming of the caliphate and what it entailed.

609
01:07:25,240 --> 01:07:37,290
But Lina? Yeah, so I think we do agree that political authority was something that was the object of competition interaction overlap,

610
01:07:37,290 --> 01:07:45,510
that there were multiple groups, not only jurists but other types of scholars who were competing for four forms of political authority.

611
01:07:45,510 --> 01:07:51,000
I wouldn't. I mean, I always get uncomfortable when I hear centralisation.

612
01:07:51,000 --> 01:07:57,810
So the claim that somehow modern sovereignty is contestable as if pre-modern sovereignty was not would for me be

613
01:07:57,810 --> 01:08:04,680
problematic because I think that what we should always do is look comparatively and contextually and historically.

614
01:08:04,680 --> 01:08:11,500
And so nothing that I've said today about the Islamic tradition is specific really to the Islamic tradition.

615
01:08:11,500 --> 01:08:15,870
I mean, there are analogies or comparisons that I can make to the Jewish tradition.

616
01:08:15,870 --> 01:08:19,170
There are things that I could say that are similar about other traditions.

617
01:08:19,170 --> 01:08:24,840
And the key issue is the ways in which the isolation of the Islamic tradition as the

618
01:08:24,840 --> 01:08:30,720
contemporary liberal antithesis then imparts the narrative in a particular way.

619
01:08:30,720 --> 01:08:36,510
So part of what I was pushing back against when I made the comments about the church versus state and allotment

620
01:08:36,510 --> 01:08:44,100
of the narrative is that the old map the scholars have become like this kind of cemented church configuration,

621
01:08:44,100 --> 01:08:47,580
and we hear it also with the ways in which we constantly hear the great men there,

622
01:08:47,580 --> 01:08:51,780
like the popes, like we hear the names of these great male scholars constantly.

623
01:08:51,780 --> 01:08:56,550
And actually, the picture in the pre-modern context is far more diffusive.

624
01:08:56,550 --> 01:08:59,280
There's a lot more people competing,

625
01:08:59,280 --> 01:09:07,050
and it isn't the case that it's now where the Ordway or others who are defining what political thought is for the entire society.

626
01:09:07,050 --> 01:09:10,830
There's actually all of these jurists and all of these low level bureaucrats and all of these

627
01:09:10,830 --> 01:09:15,570
other people who are participating in this process and they have certain claims and the killers,

628
01:09:15,570 --> 01:09:21,200
of course, and they have certain claims to political authority that have to be recognised, I think.

629
01:09:21,200 --> 01:09:30,920
If I can sort of briefly kind of ask Lina yourself a question, but it ties in with something I want, says Mohammed as well.

630
01:09:30,920 --> 01:09:35,420
And to a certain extent, it ties in with, you know, the work of another colleagues.

631
01:09:35,420 --> 01:09:41,390
Andrew marches on the sort of Zoom call, which is that you have, you know,

632
01:09:41,390 --> 01:09:49,040
also the way in which contemporary Muslim to draw on that tradition in order to legitimise certain types of practises.

633
01:09:49,040 --> 01:09:56,060
So. And this is where I struggle a little with sort of a critical theoretical approach or whether it's,

634
01:09:56,060 --> 01:09:58,820
you know, deconstruction or structural ism and so on,

635
01:09:58,820 --> 01:10:08,120
which is extremely useful for poking holes in the sort of like hegemonic narratives or mass narratives that we we are used to hearing and which I,

636
01:10:08,120 --> 01:10:13,910
I appreciate, you know, your sort of desire to really take the sledgehammer to whenever possible.

637
01:10:13,910 --> 01:10:24,140
But when it comes to the question of constructing an alternative to in the Middle East, for example, the context where there's, you know,

638
01:10:24,140 --> 01:10:31,850
authoritarian rulers who draw in the Islamic tradition also to construct their own sort of stories of legitimacy,

639
01:10:31,850 --> 01:10:35,210
what sort of constructive stories are possible to like?

640
01:10:35,210 --> 01:10:45,470
What is your thoughts on the way in which someone like Andrew much provides this great man history narrative, admittedly of the rise?

641
01:10:45,470 --> 01:10:49,190
And you know, this is a question to Mohammed as well.

642
01:10:49,190 --> 01:10:59,780
The invention, as Andrew puts it, of sovereignty, a sovereignty of the people as a modern idea that then legitimate democratic sort of practise,

643
01:10:59,780 --> 01:11:08,000
which many of us would think is very important actually in the sort of in the Muslim world considering certain circumstances.

644
01:11:08,000 --> 01:11:15,050
Although, I mean, taking into consideration the problems that are endemic to democracy as practised in the West,

645
01:11:15,050 --> 01:11:20,450
which someone say colourfully describes as Western plutocracy rather than Western democracy.

646
01:11:20,450 --> 01:11:26,930
Bearing that in mind, what sort of constructive projects are possible and what do you think of this kind of narrative of the

647
01:11:26,930 --> 01:11:32,090
creation of a sovereignty of the people is that that's something I actually hear resonances in what Mohamed,

648
01:11:32,090 --> 01:11:39,180
you've said today. OK, so first, I have to make a comment as a critical theorist,

649
01:11:39,180 --> 01:11:48,930
that this kind of critique of critique is being only deconstructive is problematic when it's not actually based on specific examples.

650
01:11:48,930 --> 01:11:53,520
So all of my work is both deconstructed and reconstructive.

651
01:11:53,520 --> 01:11:59,040
The odd number of chapters of my book are deconstructed. The even number of chapters are reconstructed.

652
01:11:59,040 --> 01:12:05,520
When I talked about the charity taxation, I gave you a deconstructive perspective on this category of religion.

653
01:12:05,520 --> 01:12:14,040
And I reconstructed the category of citizenship. When I talked about the macro history, I gave you a reconstructed macro history first,

654
01:12:14,040 --> 01:12:18,540
and then I deconstructed and told you that the church versus state narrative was problematic.

655
01:12:18,540 --> 01:12:25,260
So to begin with, I have to say I think that what happens a lot with audiences and a lot of readers, especially in Islamic studies,

656
01:12:25,260 --> 01:12:33,270
is that they become so uncomfortable by the deconstructed aspects that they become blind to all of the reconstruction I'm doing.

657
01:12:33,270 --> 01:12:37,740
And so first, it's there's always reconstruction. That's part of it.

658
01:12:37,740 --> 01:12:47,220
So it is there. And I on the specific issue of how you do the reconstruction when you're talking about modern political thought or modern,

659
01:12:47,220 --> 01:12:53,190
in my case, legal thought, I've done that very explicitly in my article comparing Islamic international laws of war.

660
01:12:53,190 --> 01:13:01,110
I mentioned that in the end when I talked about the category of secular Islamization. So I think that there are very clear ways of articulating,

661
01:13:01,110 --> 01:13:07,830
but the kind of modern dynamics that you're talking about with the articulation of those modern dynamics has to be based,

662
01:13:07,830 --> 01:13:11,370
from my perspective, on analytically rigorous concepts.

663
01:13:11,370 --> 01:13:18,060
And so what I see in the scholarship on moderate Islamist politics is a lot of decentralisation,

664
01:13:18,060 --> 01:13:27,300
a lot of conflation of orthodoxy with the Islamic tradition, a lot of inability to differentiate different concepts and categories.

665
01:13:27,300 --> 01:13:36,390
So when contemporary actors draw upon the tradition, as I said in my talk, they are making interpretations of that history.

666
01:13:36,390 --> 01:13:40,920
They're not necessarily narrating to you historical facts. There's a difference between what we,

667
01:13:40,920 --> 01:13:48,900
as scholars do and what historical actors or historical agents claim they are doing or contemporary actors or agents are doing.

668
01:13:48,900 --> 01:13:53,280
But we have to be critical in our assessment of what they claim to be doing.

669
01:13:53,280 --> 01:14:01,590
So I don't want to I don't know Andrew's work on the invention of sovereignty of people well enough to offer a critique,

670
01:14:01,590 --> 01:14:12,390
but I don't have any specific comments on that. All I'm saying is that for me, what I see over and over again is scholars of modern Islamic politics,

671
01:14:12,390 --> 01:14:17,970
basing themselves on the shaky foundations of misunderstandings of pre-modern Islamic political thought.

672
01:14:17,970 --> 01:14:24,540
And so what I pointed out is certain ways in which they make presumptions about a church versus state controversy.

673
01:14:24,540 --> 01:14:33,000
They make presumptions about the applicability of the category of religion that then has implications for how they're assessing modern Islamic law.

674
01:14:33,000 --> 01:14:38,350
Thank you. First of all, I think all acts of construction.

675
01:14:38,350 --> 01:14:44,860
Are Intel creative destruction? Yes.

676
01:14:44,860 --> 01:14:51,610
And you don't even need to be a modern Muslim to see that, I mean, if you look at the work of a 5th century jurist,

677
01:14:51,610 --> 01:14:57,250
the way they read, they read their forebears from three centuries earlier.

678
01:14:57,250 --> 01:15:01,060
I would describe it as acts of creative creative destruction, right?

679
01:15:01,060 --> 01:15:06,950
The Schopenhauer, for instance, right? You're you're transforming your material as you're as you're reproducing it.

680
01:15:06,950 --> 01:15:13,550
So I don't worry so much about whether modern thinkers are.

681
01:15:13,550 --> 01:15:21,040
Distorting some kind of historical past. I mean, I think that's inevitable.

682
01:15:21,040 --> 01:15:25,250
In in what constructive work is all about, right?

683
01:15:25,250 --> 01:15:35,150
Because you're always speaking to your own moment. And the question is, are you using, as you know, from from a constructive perspective?

684
01:15:35,150 --> 01:15:41,620
Are you? Are you working creatively with your materials? Is it something that looks like?

685
01:15:41,620 --> 01:15:45,970
Is it going to be something that at the end of the day, people are going to look and say, Wow,

686
01:15:45,970 --> 01:15:51,940
this is this is a beautiful work of of of a theory, for example, coming talking about theories.

687
01:15:51,940 --> 01:15:57,010
Or is it like a Frankenstein or is just put together?

688
01:15:57,010 --> 01:16:00,070
You also say something that modern Islamic law? What's the problem with?

689
01:16:00,070 --> 01:16:07,330
It still feels it's an aesthetic criticism that it doesn't look like a a well ordered system of law.

690
01:16:07,330 --> 01:16:14,800
That's so there's a kind of repulsion to it for somebody that has a juristic aesthetic, right?

691
01:16:14,800 --> 01:16:24,130
And so a construction is successful when people sort of look at it and see it as, Oh, this is a this is an integrated whole.

692
01:16:24,130 --> 01:16:31,110
It seems to work together. It's not really. It doesn't succeed because it's reflecting accurately the past.

693
01:16:31,110 --> 01:16:40,680
It's succeeding because it transforms the past in a way that the readers find persuasive or the people who engage with it find it persuasive.

694
01:16:40,680 --> 01:16:49,350
Right. And I think that's a that's a, you know, a critical thing for now is, say, as a Muslim intellectual, it's really important.

695
01:16:49,350 --> 01:16:57,180
I mean, part of being colonised is that you are not entitled to actually engage in re appropriations of your past.

696
01:16:57,180 --> 01:17:01,380
I mean, I'm an American. I'm in a Canadian understated law school.

697
01:17:01,380 --> 01:17:09,180
My colleagues still do. Anglo-American law are perfectly entitled to talk about the common law as you know,

698
01:17:09,180 --> 01:17:15,570
and go back for hundreds of years for finding rule of law, right like the Magna Carta.

699
01:17:15,570 --> 01:17:21,360
I mean, we really believe this myth that our modern liberties come from the Magna Carta five, whatever.

700
01:17:21,360 --> 01:17:29,100
Right? But why is it somehow outrageous when contemporary Muslim thinkers seek to appropriate their own tradition?

701
01:17:29,100 --> 01:17:39,510
Why is that then sort of characterised as the most reactionary project on the planet that must be bombed out of existence?

702
01:17:39,510 --> 01:17:47,850
I mean, literally. Right. And so there is a, I think, a real politics to this right?

703
01:17:47,850 --> 01:17:53,130
That there has to be space for legitimate Muslim constructivism, right?

704
01:17:53,130 --> 01:17:57,480
I mean, criticise it in the way you would criticise anything else,

705
01:17:57,480 --> 01:18:02,700
but it's just it's just it's kind of crazy when you think about the fact that people

706
01:18:02,700 --> 01:18:10,430
really think you're going to solve terrorism by banning it in this time of year. Seriously, let's just think about that, right?

707
01:18:10,430 --> 01:18:14,780
I mean, serious people actually believe this. Right.

708
01:18:14,780 --> 01:18:18,830
And so if you re if you take in the time here seriously, you engage with them.

709
01:18:18,830 --> 01:18:25,490
As a Muslim, you are actually taking the risk of being identified as an extremist and a terrorist.

710
01:18:25,490 --> 01:18:32,930
And this is kind of insane. These reflect the sorts of constraints, of course, which we've been working on to,

711
01:18:32,930 --> 01:18:39,260
you know, in a very striking way for the last 22 years, 20 plus years.

712
01:18:39,260 --> 01:18:46,190
But in some respects, I mean this. I'm going to use this as an opportunity to highlight that Nina does a lot of work in

713
01:18:46,190 --> 01:18:54,170
decolonial theory that we live in the sort of like shadow of 500 years of colonialism.

714
01:18:54,170 --> 01:19:03,170
And in many respects, everyone here is extremely privileged to have always been a, you know, esteemed,

715
01:19:03,170 --> 01:19:10,460
globally recognised universities, but we're also complicit in that sort of process of colonisation.

716
01:19:10,460 --> 01:19:21,440
And that's it. I really sort of like, I'm heartened by your complaint, Mohammed, that you know,

717
01:19:21,440 --> 01:19:31,130
there needs to be sort of more of a space for thinking about these sorts of things without the security state sort of bearing down upon us.

718
01:19:31,130 --> 01:19:35,420
I had sort of other questions and reflections, but I'm a bit conscious of time.

719
01:19:35,420 --> 01:19:41,270
We've got six minutes left. I did want to ask if anyone has any final questions, please feel free to ask.

720
01:19:41,270 --> 01:19:48,020
I didn't want to hear Gemini's the remainder of the discussion. So really up to up to you.

721
01:19:48,020 --> 01:20:03,540
What we do next? No, I just think if there are no further questions, I mean, in a way, what do you know, what's come up in the last few comments has?

722
01:20:03,540 --> 01:20:15,040
Is the issue of context in thought and whether it is the great man theory or what?

723
01:20:15,040 --> 01:20:25,850
What can contemporary intellectuals, actually? Constructively get from there past, you know, these questions seem to circle around, if you will.

724
01:20:25,850 --> 01:20:36,260
Quentin Skinner Can the claim of context be absolutely crucial for thinking about political thought?

725
01:20:36,260 --> 01:20:45,760
And of course, in some ways this by default renders everything that's non Western European illegitimate.

726
01:20:45,760 --> 01:20:57,090
It cannot be described as political thought, because the very often the the.

727
01:20:57,090 --> 01:21:03,670
The intellectual context is fragmented. People are not reading the same things.

728
01:21:03,670 --> 01:21:10,370
There's been a gap. All of those things now as mom would suggest whether or not actually even Western European political,

729
01:21:10,370 --> 01:21:18,730
what can be understood realistically as being wedded to a context in the way that's going to suggest this is a separate question,

730
01:21:18,730 --> 01:21:28,930
but I wonder whether. Context taken in that sentence might actually prove to be counterproductive.

731
01:21:28,930 --> 01:21:34,660
You know, how might it be possible to think about political thought in a way that is not bounded?

732
01:21:34,660 --> 01:21:43,000
Which is not to say that we don't a historic size or that we don't do what leader very correctly says we should do,

733
01:21:43,000 --> 01:21:50,590
which is make the distinctions between pre-modern and modern, past and future,

734
01:21:50,590 --> 01:21:57,470
etc. as visible as we possibly can, but rather that even if we are thinking about, say,

735
01:21:57,470 --> 01:22:07,930
either pre-modern or modern of intellectual history or political thought without having to translate from one to the other,

736
01:22:07,930 --> 01:22:18,760
the fact that we don't necessarily have a canary and type context of continuous or apparently continuous thinking,

737
01:22:18,760 --> 01:22:22,240
it might pose a problem, but it might actually be an opportunity as well.

738
01:22:22,240 --> 01:22:29,620
And I just wonder sometimes whether some approaches to thinking about great men and they are always men.

739
01:22:29,620 --> 01:22:43,700
Sadly, as you know, voices projecting from a period or a past is in some way a kind of rearguard action of a refit retrofitting context.

740
01:22:43,700 --> 01:22:52,730
In a minimal way around an individual, because it's not so available in a in a more general form anyway.

741
01:22:52,730 --> 01:22:59,740
Just some thoughts lead. I don't know if you have any comment on that. I see there is a question on chat as well.

742
01:22:59,740 --> 01:23:07,040
So I is I take your point completely, which is that there's always a certain amount of danger to contextualisation because where

743
01:23:07,040 --> 01:23:11,930
does the contextualisation end and what contextualisation is included and what's excluded,

744
01:23:11,930 --> 01:23:16,850
right? Because it's actually an act. It's not a passive sort of thing.

745
01:23:16,850 --> 01:23:22,130
It's it's it's constructive in a very clear way when you define what a context is.

746
01:23:22,130 --> 01:23:31,500
But I use contextualisation to mean historicism and in my case, specifically radical historicism as a way of understanding genealogy.

747
01:23:31,500 --> 01:23:36,860
So as I think Faisal and I agree, religion has a colonial genealogy.

748
01:23:36,860 --> 01:23:41,900
We know that the concept of religion was disseminated throughout the world through colonialism,

749
01:23:41,900 --> 01:23:45,890
and so rejecting the category of religion is an anti-colonial move.

750
01:23:45,890 --> 01:23:51,620
This is why decolonial theorists recognise religion like the categories of race,

751
01:23:51,620 --> 01:23:56,340
ethnicity and gender were articulated in colonial contexts in particular ways.

752
01:23:56,340 --> 01:24:00,620
But there is a question in the Q&A that I'm going to try to answer please.

753
01:24:00,620 --> 01:24:03,110
That's OK. We come to the conclusion. Yeah.

754
01:24:03,110 --> 01:24:10,790
So the question is basically what does that contemporary Western Academy specifically in terms of who works on Islamic legal theory,

755
01:24:10,790 --> 01:24:19,520
what miss when it comes to critical legal critical theory? So I can answer this very simply, which is that scholars who work on Islamic theory,

756
01:24:19,520 --> 01:24:23,990
legal theory or scholars who work on Islamic law basically don't have critical theory training.

757
01:24:23,990 --> 01:24:27,500
So there is no critical theory in the study of Islamic law.

758
01:24:27,500 --> 01:24:31,310
Today, they're there basically isn't anything so missing.

759
01:24:31,310 --> 01:24:37,970
They miss everything. I mean, but that's you know, as you also saw in this discussion, if you're starting from a critical perspective,

760
01:24:37,970 --> 01:24:42,380
then there's going, you're going to reach an impasse very quickly where you don't have a place to agree.

761
01:24:42,380 --> 01:24:51,690
So if, for example, we can't agree that religion is a modern concept in that it's colonial, then the discussion stops at some point.

762
01:24:51,690 --> 01:24:58,490
As appropriate, the time as any to actually close the discussion with Osama, if you do us a favour.

763
01:24:58,490 --> 01:25:02,320
Sure. And I apologise if my three year old in the background makes a bit of noise,

764
01:25:02,320 --> 01:25:13,810
but I really am grateful to both of you for a at times rather spirited discussion and I think all the better for it.

765
01:25:13,810 --> 01:25:20,110
And I look forward to you both sort of joining us in person at some point.

766
01:25:20,110 --> 01:25:25,120
I mean, in the case of, you know, we have the pleasure of having you for a few more years.

767
01:25:25,120 --> 01:25:30,310
And I also wanted to just say that this is the last of this term's seminar series.

768
01:25:30,310 --> 01:25:36,910
We're going to resume with another five seminars next term. These will be advertised, I hope, within the next couple of weeks.

769
01:25:36,910 --> 01:25:38,290
So please keep your eyes open for that.

770
01:25:38,290 --> 01:25:47,470
If anyone is interested in watching the RE recordings, please go to the YouTube channel for the Middle East Centre, Oxford.

771
01:25:47,470 --> 01:25:54,160
They will be put up there. And if you'd like to be on the mailing list, obviously have a look at the St. Anthony's College website.

772
01:25:54,160 --> 01:25:55,450
The events will be up.

773
01:25:55,450 --> 01:26:04,240
You can register there, but you can also write to to myself, and I will sort of pass your email on if you'd like to be on the mailing list.

774
01:26:04,240 --> 01:26:09,430
But thank you very much and thank you, Faisal, for really sort of bringing this together.

775
01:26:09,430 --> 01:26:18,100
You know, suggesting this as an idea. So is Faisal, 18. He was the evil mastermind behind all of this and very much appreciated.

776
01:26:18,100 --> 01:26:23,260
And thank you, everyone for your attendance and participation. Thank you all.

777
01:26:23,260 --> 01:26:27,460
Very nice to see you, Mohammed Lila, and I hope to meet soon. Yes.

778
01:26:27,460 --> 01:26:40,154
Have a great day, everybody. Thank you. Hey, can I buy?