Welcome all to this, the third session of the political talk seminar sponsored by the Middle East Centre at St. Anthony's College, Oxford.
My name is Faisal BBG and I am convening the seminar along with my colleague at the Middle East Centre and at the Oriental Institute,
was summoned as to me. Let me introduce our two speakers for today, who will be speaking on the theme of sovereignty.
First, we have an original, very senior fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies at Central European University and very recently,
Oxford and Islamic Centre Visiting Fellow, the author of two wonderful books Advice for the Sorbonne Prophetic Voices.
Secular Politics Seem to be about Islam and the future of Iran's past and Islam of Mulk remembered.
She will be speaking first for 20 minutes and will be followed by Sam UTube,
assistant professor of law and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Texas at Austin Law School,
author of the important book Law Empire and the Sultan Ottoman Imperial Authority,
and later Hanafi Jurisprudence, whose new project is on making Islamic law relevant.
And Sammy will be speaking immediately following again for another 20 minutes,
after which we will have a discussion and audience members are encouraged to write up their questions, either in the Q&A box or in the chat box.
And I will come to them when we're done with the presentations, and if they're unable to do that,
they can raise their hand function and I might call on on those who do so.
And so Negin, over to you. Thank you very much.
Based on Oxford and Osama organising the seminar very much, look forward to your comments, everyone.
My talk is going to be me. It's called Islamic imperatives and Islamic rulers, and it the focus is on the way in which we study sovereignty.
We can study sovereignty in the pre-modern Islamic world.
Richard Tucks, the sleeping sovereign criticises Russo's claim that by not having sufficiently distinguish a sovereign from the government,
all previous writers. This is Russo claiming all previous writers have failed to understand the democratic constitution
suggesting and Richard talks criticises Russo to say that this must be taken with a grain of salt.
But the first formulation of the distinction is instead is not resolved, but rather with John Wooden himself.
Now Rousseau dies in 1778, John Wooden in 50 96 and uncorks claim and by way of introduction,
I wish to direct you to a passage from Evan Calhoun's celebrated Almog.
The author discusses the meaning of the caliphate and they will.
Calhoun, of course, dies in 14 or six. Sovereignty rights is premised on social association and necessity for mankind.
It requires subjugation and force, which are signs of mankind's aggressive and animalistic nature.
The commands of its possessor, the possessor of sovereignty that is,
will therefore deviate from what is right and undermine the worldly interests of his subjects,
where he will force upon them his own objectives and ambitions, which may suppress what they are willing to bear.
The situation will differ in response to the ambitions of different generations.
Compliance will be undermined as a result in disobedience would reach its head,
causing chaos and bludgeon distinction between a ruler and sovereignty.
Here between monarch and its possessor, and indeed between sovereignty and state is central to avocadoes discussion of the caliphate.
And importantly, Evan Calhoun is not an outlier in the annals of Islamic political thought.
Sometime between April and September 2500 in a small town in Iran,
the aristocrat turns 14:00 along Dolly, Asim Noni wrote in Arabic, tweeted Alwaleed.
Assorted caddied job title muddied the inspiration, refuting the rebels sophistry, ostensibly to refute the philosophical method.
In it, he wrote, The sovereignty of every sultan and hear the word he used is the phrase Simoni.
Use this sultan achool slogan. Proceeds from his that is God's command who will command and the justice of every king proceeds from his God's justice.
He installed them as Vice Gerrans, headed by monkeys preachers for the well-being of bears in the mundane world.
According to his wisdom and by means of his wisdom, he God does what he God wishes and decides what God wants.
Sean Anthony has re-examined the of the book in early Islamic political discourse,
suggesting that it cannot merely be seen as the antithesis of an earlier hateful ideal a caliphate on the model of prophecy,
rather in the discourse of the war on an early Muslim piety.
Anthony hits your look with a capacious term that embraces ideas such as sovereignty and dominion in both its human and divine instantiation.
In this regard, the etymology of malt resonates loudly and clearly with the etymology of sovereignty in Bhutan's own usage.
I studied by talk and many others. Well done, celebrity celebrity status aetiologies of sovereignty also rests on his taxonomic innovation,
he declared, contrary to all the doctrines of jurisprudence and scholars who have misunderstood the real issue,
the Miram Imperium of Roman law did not belong either to the prince or to the officers and agents of the state or to anybody else.
It belonged rather to the impersonal state, and because it was a distinct species of power,
it deserved to be called by a unique name that can only be attributed to the state.
It was no longer to be called simply imperium, but rather sovereignty.
And sovereignty is comprised of the power for Wooden to appoint and dismiss the officers and to get laws to everyone.
Furthermore, the distinction without delineates also entails a concept of perpetual sovereignty or power,
thus distinguishing between the underlying location of sovereignty and the form that governmental power might take at any particular moment.
But how is sovereignty conceptualise if separated from the state?
Another example will illustrate the point.
One telling anecdote in Seattle Moonlight, a late 11th century miracle princess by the famously powerful missing look busier to 2000,
Sultan's features a wronged man for whom justice was recovered by a humble killer in Bangkok.
Taylor was well known for his unfettered access to the Caliph, having successfully intervened on the wrong man's behalf.
The Taylor set out to explain how his direct line to the cave had come about.
He says no, that I have proclaimed the hours of prayer from the minaret of this mosque for 30 years.
I'm a tailor by trade. I have never drunk wine. Never indulge in adultery and sodomy and never approve of improper acts.
Now in this street is the house of an emir. One day after the afternoon prayer, I left the mosque to come back to this shop.
I saw the emir coming along in a drunken state, holding on to a young woman's veil.
He was dragging her by force, and she was crying for help and saying, All Muslims rescue me.
I'm not a woman of this sort. This Turk is presumptuously and forcibly carrying me off with mischievous intent.
Moreover, my husband just sworn to divorce me if I'm ever away from this house at night, according to the.
Bystanders did not dare to intervene for the trip was well placed and notorious for its cruelty.
The tale could not tolerate the piety.
He gathered a bunch of men and they marched to the commander's house, evoking the duty of commanding right and forbidding pulling.
The men yelled out. You think there is no Muslim left in Baghdad? How dare you write under the candidate's nose?
Drag a pious woman to your house to stand with her. Either hand this woman to us right now, or we shall take her grievance to almost nothing.
The Abbasid, the network paid no heat and ordered his men to beat up the poorest protesters.
The Watson Come Taylor returned home, but he could not sleep.
He knew that it was too late to save the woman's honour,
but he still had the time to prevent her from staying out all night and keep the abduction a secret from her husband.
He decided to announce the call to prayer at once instead of a dawn,
thinking that the debauched truck would not realise the time and let the woman go.
Caleb was awake, however, and was disturbed by the untimely call to prayers.
He sent out his Chamberlain to look for the perpetrator of this growth, Londoner who had summoned the populace to prayer.
Well before it's that time the and was taken to the Caliph.
Once it informed of the Turks conduct,
the Caliph sent for the Turkic emir and had him put in a sack and thrashed until there was not a single bone left unbroken in his body.
The sack was then thrown into the Tigris. On the surface,
the anecdote suggests there's a lone wolf who had been removed from his position by the king a short while after
penning his memoir was disaffected with the South jokes and therefore did not think much of jokes in general.
But there's a subtle twist to the story's conclusion. When the drunken trooper is brought to the caliph caught to the Empire's Turk,
the Caliph is to have said one in my policy, toward my subject and toward Islam.
Have you seen that is impelled you to perform such deeds?
Have I manifested laxity in religious matters or oppression?
The moral of the anecdote is motivated.
On the one hand, it is a clarion call for the hapless Caleb to attend to his duties and protect Muslims from the pious Turks.
On the other hand, ignore wise vigilance, a state requisite a good rulership as a voice and mirrors for princes across the globe.
But it is not the Caleb that possesses vigilance.
It is Islam that acts to right wrongs and deliver the common good with the Muslim as the vessel through which Islam acts in history.
What is such the innocuous anecdote about a humble Kaito who stands up to the mighty general reflects the book's views on the political order.
It is not the bosses who are glorified, but Islam itself upheld as the ideology of the state.
The closing of the anecdote is instructive.
There are many stories of this guy I have related this much in order that the master of the world, the subject sultan that is,
may know how cadets in kings have always guarded the sheep from the wolves, how they have kept the visuals in check.
What precautions they have taken against evildoers. And how they have strengthened, upheld and cherished Islam in this schema.
The ruler lives in kings or the arms of the state. They act or should act to protect the people and protectors and the common good.
But the ruler both represents Islam and is accountable to it.
The practise of justice, which promotes the common good, is the upholding of Islam.
It is clear from these and countless other examples that we just don't have time to attend to in this forum.
But the stop, the study of sovereignty in Islamic history,
perhaps even a conceptual history of sovereignty, soccer is not so much from a lack of a consistent,
traceable history, but rather the unbridgeable gap that separates pre-modern political thought from its modern counterpart.
As true for true for political thought produced in in in the Islamic world, as it is with scholarship on the topic undertaken in the Western Academy.
We're all that matters, Islamic political thought is studied in translation.
On the one hand, and as generally recognised,
most of the scholarship produced on global thought traces the trajectory and impact of war on European ideas and concepts
as they make their way around the world and has regularly conceded in the Islamic world since the mid-19th century.
Thinkers obsess over what was missing from their polities and what measures should be taken to overcome the European lead in a variety of fields.
Finally, political thinkers themselves engage with the canon of European political thought rather than pre-modern Islamic thinkers,
even when they engage with the adverse effects of colonialism modernity oft repeated
is the lament that Islamic political thought lacks a canonical conceptual vocabulary.
Other studies focus on the question of non corresponding or how the modern social scientific toolkit was understood
or misunderstood in the Islamic world because the semantic field of HDMI overlap properly with society.
Is that still a proper rendition of the Constitution?
Or can independence from foreign rule Channel Nation building as it was experienced in Europe when despotism was contested and so on and so forth?
In this way, vein Mohammad Wasim Zeman has argued against rendering the war unlike term al-Mutlaq as sovereignty.
He observes that the idea of sovereignty has a very particular history in European political thought,
and that it emerged in tandem with the rise of the modern state.
Whatever terms like and hawkman and work meant the mediaeval commentators of the Koran,
they could not have meant what sovereignty meant to say John Wooden or Thomas Hobbs, he says.
Someone goes on to add that the mediaeval executes jurists and theologians meant a whole range of things when they wrote of God's authority and Power.
He was seen to be the source of everything, and by that token of political power to this, he takes he.
Zeman takes to attest to the lack of a connexion between the currency of sovereignty and secular politics,
and therefore the absence of the principle in pre-modern Islamic political life.
Things changed in the modern period known as someone traces the evolution of God's power and authority articulated in the language of sovereignty,
in modern Islamist discourse, in the writings of the likes of Rashid Drainer and Little who borrowed from Pierce familiar with Western discourse.
The bulk of his article focuses on how this concept, the sovereignty of God that is not a concept indigenous to the Islamic tradition,
has come to dominate Islamist discourse in the modern period.
But it may just be that we are looking for love in the wrong places.
The archaeology of sovereignty anywhere in the world is very much grounded in reality creation and rethinking sovereignty.
In the words of David, David Graber partakes of absolute power, the power of command,
the ability to issue orders backed up by the threat of punishment and most importantly, the power to stand outside a moral or legal order.
And as a consequence, be able to create new rules and to embody chaos has to impose order.
You mind kingship, simply what represents this principle in its purest form?
The monopoly of coercive force, which were so famously attributed to the modern state, is only is nothing more than its secularisation.
God's had it first, and once the principle of sovereign power takes root, it appears almost impossible to get rid of kings can be killed.
Kingship abolished. What the principle of sovereignty tends to remain.
It is, in fact, the organising principle of social life, and as modern himself conceded,
a feature of all political communities, although its precise character had never been fully understood on 10 20 sharp.
Thank you very much, lady, and those really wonderfully interesting, and we will obviously come back to all these themes that you've raised.
But let's move on to Sammy's talk immediately. So, Sammy, please go ahead.
Thank you, fiscal. I'm going to share my screen very quickly. OK, so I'd like to thank the organisers of the Centre for the kind invitation.
And thank you. Everyone was able to make it today, so I must start with a disclaimer.
In my current research, I did not set out to investigate the political authority of the head of Egypt in the 19th century.
Instead, the debates about political sovereignty that I'd like to discuss today were
articulated in relation to Islamic Courts and the colonial attempts to reform them.
So from that perspective,
I did not consult purely political treatises on sovereignty or others in order or social history to glean insights into this question.
Recent examples of works that's excellent in that regard are at the misdemeanour and an end to March that might be consulted for that perspective.
So my presentation today will address the contours of the political sovereignty of the city of colonial Egypt,
specifically in 1899 and its radical transformation in the Egyptian Kingdom post-World War One in 1922.
This presentation consists of two parts. The first part focuses on debates about Cadyville sovereignty under automatically full order,
and the second part will discuss the Egyptian deliberations on the meaning of
the of the French word sovereignty or sovereignty in the a independent state.
I observe that in some treatments of modern Egyptian legal history,
concepts such as sovereignty have been taken for granted within when in fact there were records of
lengthy debates and discussions on its Arabic rendering and translation into the words CEDA in 1922.
Similarly, debates on the inner workings of the institutional demarcations between secular political power and religious bodies.
In the post, Ottoman Egypt indicate that these boundaries were unsettled and indeterminate, even until into rose and 40s.
The ratification of the Egyptian constitution in 1923 by Egyptian nationalists after the Declaration of Independence in 1922 was
viewed by some scholars as a legal revolution which reversed the relationship between the sovereign and the and Islamic law,
the Sharia in general, and instead, in this new order, the the Sultan or the king.
Instead of being under under under its rule,
it became above it and be able to control the entire institutions structures that came to be in the new solutions of the Egyptian state.
So this is here going to the brief three points main arguments on my position today.
I would claim that appeals to automate little order enabled Muslim jurists and judges in the
in 1899 to fend off some of the attempts by the colonial authorities to reform these courts.
I will also try to point out that the limits on the on the sovereignty of the regime, although that might seem restrictive,
but also allowed him some space to manoeuvre some of the demands in how Egypt could be shaped and how the British is order to achieve in that colony.
And finally, I would say that the Constitution of 1923 was by design intentionally was designed to
be a radical shift of how the authority of the well-heeled amre or the Khedive used
to be under Ottoman rule to something completely different that they theorise and
argued for very clearly in this constitution and its discussions amongst its members.
So on May 15th, 1899, under Hades, our best friend me, the second he ruled Egypt between 18, 92 and 1914, when he was removed from power.
So decree was issued to change the procedural design of the Islamic Supreme Court and similarly in Syria.
The decree proposed changes to that would allow two judges from the secular appellate national courts to serve on the Islamic Supreme Court.
And if that was to be successful, that would have changed the Constitution of this courts.
For example, this court is to be consists of three key components the chief judge of Egypt to demonstrate
they used to be appointed by the Ottoman officials and three judges appointed by the decree.
And suddenly, we have these two judges appointed by the free from the appellate national courts.
So that was purely a British move in which colonial officials aided by secular legal elite in order to penetrate this high Islamic judicial body,
which triggered a strong response and really did not go ahead as as imminent.
So after 20 days only in June 3rd, 1899, a new decree was issued to withdraw this new proposed law.
And these and the changes that came with it, and there were three key figures at the centre of pushing these changes.
I think you can see some images of these figures on the screen here. So the first was Malcolm McLaren.
He died in 1941. He was a British adviser at the Ministry of Justice.
Second, somebody by the name Ibrahim Pasha was appointed as the Minister of Justice in 1891.
And finally, Boutros-Ghali, Patrick and Seamier he died was assassinated in nineteen ten.
So these figures were key to proposing them.
But one, the bill that was proposed to the magistrate accompanying this is the Shura Council in Egypt to allow these changes to go ahead.
So the government made some changes to the bill. However, that bill was rejected in a couple of times in the council.
The British were very frustrated by these attempts. They went anyway and were able to get a divorce decree against the recommendation by this council.
So a bill was issued, a decree was issued by these changes.
However, we find key figures that came as kind of heroes in some traditional circles to push against some of these colonial policies.
The first one is the clergy must the chief judge of Egypt Jamaluddin offending.
He was appointed as as the Egyptian advocate in Egypt in 1892 and then moved to Egypt.
And this and the gun laws are at the same time is soon anyway.
So both of these figures rejected the bill,
and they presented a set of arguments that deemed that the some of these changes quote unquote deemed antithesis to Islamic law or was shut off,
as they say. OK, so that pushed these figures in the government.
So what is really. The special adviser to go to the council and make arguments,
why these changes fall within the jurisdiction and within the sovereign authority of the city?
So the the minister affirmed that the two Muslim judges from the appellate
national courts would be sufficiently equipped to serve on the Islamic Courts.
And he elaborated that the job description of such position is,
quote unquote administrative matter that falls within the exclusive purview of the government.
In other words, the minister dismissed the obvious institutional differences between Islamic and national courts at the time.
As long as the these differences are reduced to the Muslim, this of these figures who are going to serve in the courts.
So the minister reminded his interlocutors that it was the government bureaucrats to decide
the job descriptions of who was weren't going to serve on Islamic Courts or secular courts,
for that matter. So for me, that could be read as a rejection of the historical and institutional practise in Egypt until
up to this time in which Al-Azhar and the Grand Judge of Egypt played a key role in selecting,
disciplining and reviewing decisions by all Islamic Courts.
Until that, that time period. So the minister presented a set of arguments to assert the political authority of the captive in Egypt,
which gave him the power to appoint judges in the judiciary, according to the Minister of Justice.
The political sovereignty of the provisional rulers wilayat.
The camera is very important here. It was general and it included the power to establish it digitally and appoint judges.
The minister declared that there was no doubt the beheading in Egypt has sovereignty and the word he used
Alfred OK and enjoyed a general political authority which included authority over Islamic Courts in Egypt.
It followed him, maintained that the appoint of judges is a concomitant right of the Sharif.
The minister continued to argue that Alexander can explain that the judicial appointments
in Egypt was delegated to local government by decree from the Ottoman sultan,
and as a result, the government exercised power to appoint judges across the provinces,
and Egypt was granted already by the Ottomans, except in Cairo, which is the supply.
Forte appointed the chief judge up until the very late 19th century.
So the most contentious claim in the minister's remarks in this debates inside should be the Shura Council was that his assertion
that the sovereign power of the had've in Egypt was a general authority explained that the previous judge in Clardy must.
The Judge of Egypt was appointed by Shadi Ismail, and no one contested this authority by the articles of time or by local Muslim authorities in Egypt.
He claims that was for 15 years. No one said anything. So in his role as a chief judge, supposedly this you must has issued long opinions.
Some of his opinions made them do the mosque, and then they call that to a collection by the move of Egypt for almost then 50 years.
Mohamed Labas al-Mahdi can image here on the left the screen, and no one really has said anything in this regard.
So the narrative by the minister, however, falters when we know the actual recorded historical documents that we see in which the Ottoman
opposed any time of in the completely independent Egyptian purview over the judiciary.
We actually know for sure that the Ottomans sent an actual telegraph do the idea of declaring and appointing Hadi Mansour into the early 20th century.
So any claims by the minister that the Egyptians have had that independent started to appoint that judge doesn't seem to be the case.
The minister also attempted to explain away Ottoman approvals of judicial appointments of the last judge a quote unquote as a promotion in rank,
not as initiating deployment.
So to summarise the arguments of the Minister of Justice in Egypt should draw attention to the fact that some of the political
elite in Egypt attempted to diminish the ultimate political and legal sovereignty in the Egyptian province at the end.
This was unsuccessful efforts on the part of the minister who held who had played
a key role in serving British colonial interests under the pretext of reform.
But it's important to stress that the arguments by the Mufti and by the judge of Egypt were not simply that this is going to antithesis Islamic law,
or this somehow contradicts rules of Islamic law.
They had compelling arguments and reasons beyond the general frame that the minister again attempted to to say so first.
They argued that the Islamic Supreme Court decisions in Egypt, according to the ordinances of Islamic Courts, is a form of legal response,
nor the fatwa which required legal discovery and expertise in Islamic law, as opposed to simply state codified law.
Thus, those who would serve on the court must be knowledgeable scholars and judges in Islamic Courts,
as well as Hanafi jurisprudence, as used to be the official school of the Ottoman Empire.
And then what? We had also raised concerns about the arguments of the Minister of Justice about the sovereignty of the footage.
Now what we cited that that the famous effort that will hinder to affirm that if a judge was appointed by that by the Caliph and one of the provinces,
the local emir has no authority to appoint a different judge in this province and has no authority to resolve disputes himself amongst the people.
If the local emir acted again as the Caliph directive and appointed the judge anywhere in the province,
his decisions, according to federal India, are void and no.
So in short, the central point in debates and in this debate is the formation of the collegial sovereignty over Egypt.
In 1899, it reveals how appeals to Ottoman political authority shielded Muslim institutions and Islamic Courts,
at least temporarily, from colonial interventions and immediate dismantling.
So it took some time. I would suggest that the current accounts that dismiss Ottoman California 30 as purely symbolic or rhetorical understate that
its historical significance as a key obstacle to the colonial hegemony and control over some of these Muslim institutions,
like the work for other or Islamic Courts, as we just as clear.
So this leads me to to my second point about about this debate about what exactly is sovereignty in Egypt on the screen here,
you can see four sentences to the two can Egyptians internal deliberations of the
meaning dimension of the French word sovereignty or the English sovereignty?
They said As you can see on the screen, must most say either OK or must read them or must, which that is the most helpful element.
We had no idea what exactly sovereignty could mean.
Again, that was 1923. So in 1922 March 1922,
the Egyptian king issued a decree to form a construction committee to put together
the Egyptian Constitution after independence so that constitution was preceded,
of course,
by Lindsay conversations and negotiations between Egypt and Britain and key disagreements about the British military prisons and the revision.
Some kind of some government, a function of hanging in there and did not really was resolved until that time period.
But we have something very important. We have a direct reaction by key government official who was the minister of Justice.
It was his assessment of this new project in relation to all the kind of history of the KGB in Egypt.
His name is Ahmed, as October was the Ministry of Justice.
In 1923, he wrote the memo in which he offered an assessment of the need to restore order compared to previous institutions in the pre-World War One.
The gist of the memo, in my view, can be summarised in three points very quickly.
Number one, the new constitutional monarchy diminished the power of the king significantly
in relation to any authority of who they used to exist up to this point.
Second, the new order, in his view, was superior to the previous institutions, which suffered from,
quote unquote limited legislative authority of the councils elect political accountability for the government.
Third, the New Order expanded the representation of local constituencies and minorities to do so to this minister to the victor.
The most important article in 1922 read Constitution is number twenty three,
and this article declared that all sources of authorities emanate from the Ummah from the nation on.
Mahere does not mean the Muslim Jewish community, but here the Egyptian nation.
He claims that in all previous political designs, he argued that were legal was was the only source of authority and legitimacy where
he was able to share some of his power through legislative and ministerial councils.
So the conversation about constitutional making in this period is key to the
political orientation of these members who served on the on the committee.
All of them, without exception, were attempting to formulate an Egyptian equivalent specific to a specific concept of certainty.
All the references, with no exception, mentioned either the French, German,
English or American forms of government for that Egypt to be able to follow and emulate.
So I'd like to focus in this spot very quickly on the rise of a key Arabic term C++.
That came to be used as synonymous with sovereignty. I would suggest that although the term is taken for granted, yet, its history is rather obscure.
I would like to make for April a preliminary observations first,
that word CIA has used today in Arabic and a vocabulary as sovereignty is only 100 years old.
Second, the discussions of the Committee of the first Egyptian Constitution after independence reveal that the term is contentious and ambiguous.
Third, the term C++ was invented specifically to murder Western conceptions of sovereignty.
Fourth, there were unsuccessful attempts to ground the emerging sovereign power of the Egyptian state with an Islamic political and legal tradition.
For example, all attempts to use the word will air and instead of Seattle were rejected.
So now I'd like to share with you some of the content of these discussions inside the committee.
But on September 29, 1922,
the following conversation were recorded amongst the members of the Construction Committee concerning the first article of the Constitution.
So the first proposed phrasing of that article of expressing sovereignty of Egypt is that, as you can see on the screen, Dowless, so either Mr Killen.
The feel measure protested the use of the port say Yida elaborated that the committee
members meant to express the meaning of the French term sovereignty in Arabic.
He stressed that the term Mr Yida in the Georgian is that if that is the famous Arabic sources,
when you look up for some definitions used to mean of the word,
say it or say that it was an album, or that you can manage that verse or govern the vast majority of people.
It proposed instead that again, he in his mind that there would say, you know,
is actually going to fall short of the meaning of what sovereign mean in western Africa.
But again, he would say that because it's only the vast majority, not everybody that's in the term is not actually deemed suitable.
So he proposed instead to use the term will air. OK, so Tocqueville elaborated that the article would would've been read as Mr de la La La La.
Wasn't that an NFC? How Egypt will have the authority to govern itself?
So, well, somebody else stand up in the committee and propose that was to the famous Egyptian mufti again, like if Pasha.
He did not support the use of the word Sayid or Ziad or Seguido instead proposed the idea that muster,
as you can see on the screen, the second sentence Mr Latham or Egypt has the full capacity and authority.
A third person rose up in the committee and said Well, as his name is Mahmud Abdel Nasser Rebate or objected to.
These attempts reveal that guys, we have spent so much time to find the what translation Sierra for that term sovereignty.
So although the term C++ might be unfamiliar to many people, he acknowledged,
but that term will only need time to be able people to be commonly used amongst young people.
So, so at this point, the fire past and other folks in the committee rejected all this claims and had the vote.
The majority voted to use the word C++ as the most important term that would come up in that framework.
So I would just end by something very quickly here.
One of the most important figures on this committee, his name is Abdul Aziz family big and later became a prime minister.
Foreign Minister interjected,
emphasised the importance of stating that sovereignty in Egypt in the Constitution should become as the first words in the sentence,
not their last words. As you can see here, they say Mr.
On the second sentence, Mr Downer affirms that the other he was objected to use the word see at the end of the sentence,
and he made a similar to this word to that phrase poor father. I hear it.
This is a very interesting simile and metaphor. He would.
He basically claimed CEDA as he understood it is the is the centre concept through which independence and freedom can emanate.
And he use here, here in that phrase, who means God, father omnipotent power, overpowering God.
He says here that this sentence in Arabic does not make sense because we must use the word elect to be first.
You going to say Allah when the rule here is basically he's saying, we must use the word C++, so he says Mr.
That's yeah, that was exactly what came to be in the Constitution.
So for them, their debates about sovereignty inside the committee, instead,
the committee came to monitor a particular image a bit to understanding what's happening might look like in the emerging Egyptian state.
I'm going to stop here. Thank you so much. Thank you very much, Sami.
I love her really wonderfully rich presentation and you know, they actually strangely talk to each other across the centuries.
So, you know, it'd be really nice to see you and the Queen talk to one another as well.
I have a question for both of you in a way. And then Osama, maybe, and we have a number of questions in the chat.
You know, Negin, you begin with talks sleeping sovereign, which is very interesting because of course,
one of the things that book deals with is the latency of sovereignty that is actually goes to sleep.
It's latent and it awakes. But whether it's Buddha or perhaps even Hobbs,
the sovereign power asleep or awake has to be manifested somewhere or embodied institutionally somewhere.
And it could be the figurative brain, so it could eventually be the figure of the people in the version that the tuck gets out of Rousseau.
But what you seem to be arguing is, for a certain, a different kind of latency of sovereignty.
Except in this case, in your case, it's actually not manifested or embodied in any specific office or group.
And what I found fascinating is that.
It becomes really unattached, and so it can be the boys in Taylor who embodies it in the name of Islam or as in Cologne, it could be a power that has.
Violence built into it that could be exercised multiply, and I wonder, therefore,
if you think in in this period that you're dealing with and these narratives you're dealing with,
whether it is possible to consider sovereignty, let's leave aside for the moment the problem of translation of.
As almost as a kind of pure principle, it really isn't like the Hobbesian sovereign located in the Prince,
nor is it like a Soviet form of sovereignty which is latent or belongs to a popular sovereign assembly.
It seems to function in a kind of conceptual register, a freed of any specific office.
Nor does it seem, nor do your thinkers seem to want to attach it firmly to any specific office.
When you were talking about the canine Abbasid Caliph, who is actually not the as it were location of that sovereign power,
and for Sami again, really very interesting how linking up in a way to what McQueen was saying.
How would this? Conflict with a colleague.
And British advisers, how actually the beef comes to be the anti sovereign in some ways.
And precisely because of that, sovereignty must reappear somewhere else, even in what apparently the most unusual of places,
you know that the institutional formations that are supposedly below the Office of the Cleave and OK,
they might refer to the caliphate distant as it is, or they might refer to Sharia, or they might refer to many other things.
But it just it made me wonder whether the references either to the caliphate or the Sharia actually serve to legitimise this sovereignty,
which is no longer attached to the figure of the prince.
But cannot really serve as its repository, which is perhaps why you end up with despite the continuing theological relationship with that phrase that,
you know, condemned, et cetera, clear in the body of the people or in the state, in the nation, the Ummah as Egyptian nation.
It also struck me as interesting the fate of India as an Indian as it is is invoked
because if that is the same as the Fethullah allegedly as it is known in India,
it's normally seen as an attempt by the Mughal Emperor to actually corral the religious classes and claim,
if you will, a certain kind of added power, if not sovereign power for himself.
So it's used in a completely different way in this set of debates. Yes, so and eventually, of course, as we know,
sovereignty in a certain kind of Islam is Islamist thought then comes to be expelled altogether and predicated of God.
So it's a it's a kind of fascinating set of moves that are happening here, both in the in the kind of, you know, pre-modern.
Situation that McCain is dealing with, where it seems to be a matter of principle and in your case,
Sammy, where the prince actually becomes anti sovereign and therefore something else is happening.
So sorry, a bit of a shaggy dog question, but I wonder if there's anything in it for either of you making.
It is I mean, clearly the issue here is that sovereignty is, you know,
when you think about my people in light of some whose presentation, then it actually makes a lot more sense, you know,
the way in which I mean sovereignty is debated as if it is something like, I don't know,
a degree or a charter that can be obtained or that can be replicated where our sovereignty, in fact, is.
And I mean, sovereignty is studied precisely in the West, which they're trying to emulate.
Sovereignty is, is it is a concept that has a history and it is not a function of the degree of
independence of a state or whether or not it can feed its population or build roads,
or do any of that.
And and and that sort of very nicely, in fact, crystallises the degree to where you have in Azoulay joining and all the people that I read.
I mean, it is it is a given. Sovereignty is, is, is, is a matter is almost like a narrative construct to to talk about politics.
And clearly, like all narrative constructs that are that are forged to make political thought possible,
they each and every one of them anywhere in the world, I mean, from prehistoric times to the present.
You have narrative, you look good. And I mean, you have you have a religious conception of a religious slash, ritualistic conception of sovereignty.
Sovereignty is denoted in bed. There is some sovereignty is associated with the dance sovereignty.
Talk, you know, is is represented in in in ritual, in its in its earliest iterations.
And so the fascinating thing the absolutely fascinating thing about mediaeval Islam is that is that is precisely the way
in which the impersonal state that wooden is is and all the other ones after would then pick up on that impersonal state.
It is. It is, it is. It is. It is represented in triangulation.
So you have neither Caliph nor nor Sultan.
I mean, you writing precisely about what's the relationship between the Caliph and the something in the 11th century.
That's when you get this,
this this debate at its best and sovereignty belongs to neither nor and sovereignty itself is represented in the impersonal usage of the word Islam,
which which in a fascinating way. Of course, you point the same thing in Egypt in the mambilla period.
I think it is. Joseph Rappaport at the Queen Mary University now,
who has this wonderful article about the way in which the the legal system in monarchy, the changes in the legal system, in fact,
sort of highlight this the the the very close, intricate connexion between Shari'a and CSA, which is of great concern,
which is almost always in modern political discourse seen as rivals or pitted against one another.
And it is in that triangulation you have on the one hand on the on the on on the in the narrative and which is which, which which fascinates.
Absolutely. And we have no we are very few or we dealt with this concept at all or with with the way.
But the important thing is that we know it through its opposition so that what is it that that you write against?
So when they're discussing sovereignty, what it is, what is it that they're writing against?
And it's not, you know, in in theological discourse,
they are not writing against against secularity in any way or form when they write about sovereignty.
Now, in a modern in modern disk, it is that there is this presumption of circularity with sovereignty that is that is really,
you know, I think, limited to the world outside Europe.
And in fact, it is. It reveals a complete misunderstanding of the archaeology of sovereignty in Europe.
So in that sense, it is this. It is, it is. It is very illuminating.
I think it is to look at the ways in which this, this this this notion,
openness of an impersonal Islam that is that is a stand in for sovereignty for a thousand years.
You can easily show this in different writings, in different contexts.
And yet you see the way in which Islam is evoked has a latent and perpetual.
I mean, it is. It's almost. Every single box and and and then, of course, in the modern period, you have it, you have it.
But the real challenge of it becomes the sovereignty of the people.
So how does how does how does in the modern period, how does this exchange sort of get be formulated?
Thanks very much. And Asami, any comment? OK.
Yes. Thank you, fiscal. So. In my current research, and I do not really look carefully on the concept of sovereignty.
So as I mentioned in terms of how was the rise of discussed, it just emanates.
So in my work and look at the history of these of the institution of Islamic Courts in Egypt
and what time is so that we have a general idea that heavily in research if went wrong,
it wrote about the history of the sport.
But it seemed that I'd like to get more details about what really happened in terms of these readjustments for, for example,
having Islamic Courts for the first time in Egyptian history, and it seems to have a specific date in nineteen.
Ninety seven systemic courts have been limited to only family law on that date.
And I'd like to know how that happened, what they arguments that were put in that regard,
how Islamic law goes from being state courts suddenly became, quote unquote religious courts.
I think we have a general idea, and I'd like to provide much more details to what exactly happened was, Capone argued in these details.
I found conversation about sovereignty, to my surprise.
But I think should have been a surprise because look, Islamic judges and Islamic muftis and these as had is at the same time,
they understood that the existence of these situations is dependent on their ability to
appeal to ultimately gleeful order because it maintained its existence as an actual reality.
OK, so the issue here is not simply the appealing to something that is ambiguous,
but the understood clearly that the audience often had no authority, even if it was challenged, as you mentioned by the Cardiff.
But to some extent they thought that they can invoke it. And I think they invoked it very effectively at the time.
What really happened is when the Ottomans lost the war, things has been completely changed.
So here we have an actual military defeat that will allow a certain type of arguments to be possible.
That was not possible before deciding who, to be honest, which is the last one, the one that we're discussing here before the war,
he actually was kind of deposed by them, by the British foreign minister when he was living in Istanbul.
So in short, yes, the conversation about sovereignty is very fascinating to see how the Khedive, even from Cardiff, is managed.
That was of 1970s every single Ottoman official who wrote on that subject.
And what it felt very clearly that the Egyptian officials and the Egyptian Arcadia's who insisting on some more independence from the Ottomans,
a very short sighted that they want to be very close to Europe, want to be part of Europe,
they thought that will give them more will give more leverage to these European powers over
Egypt to shame them as they want in terms of appointing ministers for the for the Treasury,
even the budgets for the British Army in Egypt. All of this was completely decided by the British.
And Egypt has no say in this.
But this again, that goes further than the British want to form again a new legal system or the new courts or reform things.
And the British have specific ideas what religion look like in society, what family look like in society?
That moment is different. For example, when we look in 1922, when suddenly the idea is completely out of the picture, but not just that.
If you look for example, for something about the role of Al-Azhar,
who used to appoint Azhar and told Egyptian history and acted with, that was the hardest that was in the periphery of the city.
We have something called the one that above that was in the purview of the Cardiff
game because that was he and his religious representative of the Ottomans in Egypt.
That was important. Review. The first thing the British did was to make sure that it has no money by taking this out of him and
putting the above under the these parliamentary accounts that it actually able to form number one.
Number two, the move, the appointment of the Sheikh Al-Azhar into the hands of also the political elite.
So it's a massive expansion of sector of this secular political elite power to completely control the state,
not just lose authorities, but law and Islamic law and everything within it.
I see consequences for some of these things. A consequence of it is that that that the most Egyptian legal elites, especially stuck in legal age,
came to say that Islamic Courts are not possible for the modern Egyptian state.
Islamic law can be part of the civil law. But beyond that, there's no really need for some of these institutions.
Thanks very much. I mean, Osama, do you have any any comment so we can move to the ICB of five questions already?
There are plenty of questions, and it's a bit noisy here.
So I will hopefully have the opportunity to sort of participate in really amazing discussion so far.
And I don't want to deprive the various questioners from asking their questions, and I look forward to joining in midstream.
Great. So shall I ask, shall we go back before the summer and ask in reading out the questions?
Absolutely. I'm happy to actually go ahead and read the first go ahead. Go ahead and please forgive me.
This some noise in the background occasionally, but hopefully you can hear me.
And if there's any issues, please do that. So the first question comes from someone by the name of Simran Ahmed, who's asking,
and it's not specified, who's being asked, but I suspect this may be of interest to both of you.
Where does one place the concept of wilayat or sacred domain as implied in the context of Sufis of
the mediaeval sort of mediaeval South Asia in relation to sovereignty of the mediaeval sultan?
Does it hold an intermediate domain between sovereignty of the Sultan and God?
That's the question. And I think this could be of interest to both of you.
So but again, I think since we are dealing mediaeval, it might be in your terrain a little more to answer this question.
I mean, I don't know Salman Ahmed either, but to answer this question,
we have to disaggregate the problem and the question of the sovereignty of the sultan.
I mean, the sovereignty of the sultan is itself a very compromised sovereignty, even in the best of times.
There is nobody who sits there and writes, or yes, the sultan. Go, go, go. It's it's it's always.
I mean, if anything, you know, in a sort of conventional 19th century type of conception,
the thought that sovereignty would lie with the Caliph with or really with God himself.
I mean, there is no such thing as sovereignty of the sultan in in an Islamic political thought,
so that the question of the sovereignty of God and the nation should between willyou and the sovereignty of God.
We know who gets to represent the sovereignty of God on Earth or how do we debate, but the discourse will be over who gets to represent it.
And I think that debate is sort of settled in the 10th century now.
What does that exactly entail and in practise?
How does it affect the the the you know, it is one thing to study the lawyer of the Sultan of the Sufi in, say,
not in the 9th century, whereas, you know, by the time of the massive and these, of course, there is no sultan.
And I mean, there is there's hardly God in the match.
Many writings, I mean, this would be master is sovereign.
And he shows that by acting out of time, out of out of space goes, you know, he owns the entire world in his command.
So. So I think the question needs to be replaced in order to be properly addressed
and raised more in the sense of how is the sovereignty or the war or what,
you know, how is the sovereignty of the Sufi master represented in practise and in writing?
And and what are the Connexions? And that will allow us to sort of rethink that or understand the notion of malaria.
But malaria is really the intersection of political thought with political practise.
Otherwise, you're studying nothing. You're studying blood. So I mean, just to clarify and in a sense, you rephrase the question very nicely,
and it would be sort of nice to get a little more of your thoughts on that.
But when you're saying we well, there is a political theory with political practise, the will air of the sofa, of course, as you said,
with respect to the natural Mondays and in the later period is fascinatingly not just a spiritual will,
but you know, as you put it, this kind of global we are. They in a sense controlled the kings and the the the Caliph and so on.
So I wonder what sort of strain that puts on, you know, notions of even caliph rules about different sort of sovereignty.
Obviously, the sultan is kind of seen as something of an illegitimate almost in some understandings,
except when it's fused, maybe in the Ottoman context. But it is there a conflict between the villa, especially when I have enough conditions.
And the Caliph, for example, will the natural bounty chief will not will not have to worry about that because there is no caliph.
I mean, to me, the Caliph is in the Tigris.
The Mongols put him there and the imam looks or pretending to be Kato's, but nobody thinks that very seriously.
So that's what if you want to if you want to think about it. So you know, it is.
What's tremendously interesting is that from the 11th century, I mean, this is what intrigued by interesting.
I mean, what's interesting to me? So let's think about it like this, OK? Others will find other things interesting.
Would you have any? The problem with clearly early modern Islam is is soup.
Now, no matter how, you know, whether there is no such thing as stupid. We all know there is to be movement.
There are gazillions of would be movements. Gazillions of Sufi conceptions with early modern history belongs to the Sufis now.
So then the question will be, you know,
you have you can you can use early modern as as as an interesting concept that's sort of a heuristic device only if you understand it as leading you,
taking you from one period and into another.
So what does that change represent? How can that change?
What is the historical process that is being that is being manifested,
that is being reflected in the emergence of Sufi orders as the orders of history in India in the early modern period?
Now, in other words, that historical change is really a study of religious change.
So that and that and and, you know, while clearly the crystallisation is the post war period,
the trends begin in the 11th century before the Mongol period and the way it also
crosses the Sunni-Shia divide completely so that in its model of authority,
in the way it uses hedges in the way it relates to this, this business of Sunni-Shia really ultimately makes absolutely no difference.
And of course, the interesting thing is that that trend,
in spite of everything that we are reading about Sunni Shia, Sunni Shia, Sunni Shia, even in the 20th century,
one of the most fascinating comparisons that you can make is between Hassan Hammadi and al-Qaida at on the notion of how he,
you know, when you used how he as a revolutionary concept. And in that sense, think about this presentation.
OK, so maybe not. Maybe I mean, to me, it's it's amazing.
Say it follows the cardinal of Egypt. You know, there's there's one person beholden to the to the West and to the to the call to the Empire.
It's the idea of Egypt and especially the last. I mean, we we we learn of history classes at the billion of all of the period.
But it's a little Marosi.
I mean, uses resorts to his conception or the conception of the secularise in parliament of Egypt.
The secular, rising moment in Egyptian history that will be there.
It becomes the vocabulary of Islamist political thought in the 1960s.
So he doesn't use it. I mean, it does not go to heaven. He does not go to God.
He does not go to joy. He does not go to any of those. He goes, and he uses the order.
And and and and and and I, you know, in that sense, it's if you think about, for instance,
that way Schultz distinguishes between the various Reinhold Schultz that this this classifies the various Islamist discourses in the modern period.
So which one? Which ones use the past as myth and which ones use the past the past as utopia?
And how that affects the agenda that the revolutionary agenda that they did that they set?
But to me, it's fascinating that, you know,
from the 11th century until the sort of the 20th century you have this, this you have people reading each other.
And then all of a sudden in the 20th century, from Islamists to king to secular to whoever is sitting there is arguing whether or not
our sovereignty is as good as the European one or as or the or that we should rethink it.
Thank you very much, and again, I guess for some, you have your hand up and I think you have plenty to add to this conversation,
so I'll just hand it over to Sammy and then face that you can take it there on.
That's right. So just very quickly, openly surprised if Islamists will go back to Brazil in the beginning because again,
the entire system of the hour functioning is not based on some of these conceptions.
I would even claim something that actually come in the conversations amongst these committee members who founded the Egyptian Constitution 1923.
I would claim that sovereignty, or Ziada, is a rejection of malaria.
Look, Aziz Benedict made the argument, saying, Guys, Egypt can be independent and can be free but cannot be sovereign.
He says Egypt was never sovereign and the Ottomans. Egypt was not sovereign under the British even claims that look,
Algeria and Tunisia were described in the Constitution under the defence to be free and independent.
So for him, sovereignty is not is not wilayat clearly as it's understood it.
So, for example, he said. So he added that Egypt had no sovereignty under these times because sovereignty
is basically has is the ultimate authority beyond which has no other power.
So he argued that in Egypt, sovereignty is made of three elements Homeland Watan, Second Nation or third,
the ability to govern this nation within this homeland, as well as the ability to legislate for them.
So the absolute sovereign power diminished shares to family any authority beyond it.
So I so I guess my proposal here is that the modern conceptions of sovereignty are intentionally
a rupture designed to move away from what Muslim blake of what used to function is not.
So I get a bit sometimes surprised that people think that we can have the continuation of some sort,
that this is not the conversation of people who made up this new system. They reject that system for obvious reason that state them themselves.
I'm to here. I'm sorry, so we have a couple of, you know, one for the game and then another one for Sammy.
So the one from the Guinness Millard or Derby, I'm really trying to understand your methodological intervention if I understand correctly your
highlight one the limit imposed by the European canon in both the West and modernising Islamic world,
and to the emphasis of scholars who face the limit of the canon on income, insurability and untranslated ability of the Islamic past.
Can you elaborate on your methodological way out of this, Abbas?
Are you suggesting that the modern schmitty, an exceptional concept of sovereignty,
is sufficient to translate across past and present Islam and the West?
Hopefully, my misunderstanding can help you further elaborate your argument.
Well, thank you. Whenever you put this question, no,
your misunderstanding will not help me further elaborate my argument two more hours of sitting here and discussing this will, but we were.
Obviously, we can't do that. So.
It's very interesting this is exactly how I used to write my own questions and when I when I attended talks 20 years ago, not there's one.
I mean, there's no methodological impacts.
All we need to do is to read the texts and read the past.
I mean, this is the notion of sovereignty itself and the modern debates on sovereignty, as Sony has shown that too has its own moment in history,
which is when these lawmakers are sitting in the 1920s and saying we cannot use
concepts of the past two to write about sovereignty because sovereignty is different.
Now, obviously, this is tied in to the notion of all the state and the notion of Islam and the way in which Islam is,
is that is seen and and sort of internalised as the impediment.
It's seen as religion, be it seen as an impediment to the modern to modern political life.
So that, for instance, if you think about victimology of the word sovereignty itself, that etymology is very clearly tied to kinship and it preserves.
It is maintained and preserved when kinship itself is abolished.
Sovereignty does not, does not sort of get tossed into the dustbin of history when you have a republic.
Although it very clearly is tied to the concept of sovereignty.
But in the deliberations of the Egyptian parliament, if we ought to examine on his word,
then precisely, you see, because that, for instance, we don't have we take if we don't talk about,
we can talk about bologna or because we don't want things we don't write about, we don't write about Malta,
which is such a rich which has such a rich conceptual history in the writings on on in, in the political, maybe pre-modern political discourse.
So that would that that that's precisely that effort and precisely that know whether it's felicitous or not.
But that effort is a part of the archaeology of sovereignty in the Islamic world, so that when you look at that, I mean,
a lot of a lot of the the history of the early 20th century is taken up precisely with these questions now by critics of governments,
by governments themselves.
And, you know, across media, across even divides of sovereignty, sovereignty as an independent states or in the case of the Bible,
Egypt, which of course, independence is that is indirect at best or sovereignty is discussed indirectly at best.
People that could be what Egypt is to higher notions of authority, even even as Nixon.
So so that in other words, the history of sovereignty in the Islamic world in the 21st century is a war in the second half of the 20th century.
We'll have to reflect these very deliberations over what it is that how what it is, how is it the sovereignty can be defined, it can be defined.
But when we when we are studying it, milord, we are.
Am I suggesting that the modern schmitty, an exceptional concept of sovereignty there is nothing modern in Schmidt's articulation,
imagines himself is the first one to concede that this idea that you stand outside of the law and you stand outside of God,
I mean, that's why it's political theology. It's political theology because it sort of starts with God.
That is precisely the role that God himself envisaged in the rule that is envisaged for God in the Old Testament.
So what exactly is modern political thought and do we do?
And the elephant in the room is in or indeed,
any of these discussions is whether or not we bow to the implement through ability between political thought and political institutions on the ground.
But that is not an issue that can result in a discussion on political thought.
In other words, whether or not we have a robust nation state that corresponds to robust discussions of sovereignty,
we have robust discussions of sovereignty,
Islamic history precisely where there are robust crises in political representation and political authority as an 11th century as in the 20th century,
so that a robust discussion does not is not the existence or absence of sovereignty is something that we should.
But I think will not lead to a fruitful discussion.
That's what we mean by a concept that is perennial by a principle that is found across cultures,
across times, there is no such thing as a political order without a notion of sovereignty.
I'll stop there. Thank you very much thinking that again, very, very rich sort of reflections on the process.
Both of you and I wish we had a lot more time than we have, unfortunately, but we only have another 13 minutes or so.
And I wanted to ask some of the next question.
I'm going to ask the question that my dear Scalia has asked,
but I must say it's tie in with that based on a comment you just threw in where you in a rather animated fashion, if I may say so.
It's pointed out that these people were trying to create a distinction that the people who are
coming up with this modern notion of the other were trying to depart from the previous tradition.
So why would modern Islamists try and jump over them and engage in?
But I mean, I think the the sort of the common understanding, of course,
is that modern Islamists are a mediaeval throwback and there are various ways in which that's,
you know, a misunderstanding, but they also very often market themselves in that way.
Right? I mean, they often will say that, look, we are engaging with the original sources and so on.
But I suppose you point out in response to my question that, you know,
reaching for the original sources isn't the same as reaching for those early or Joannie or Al-Marayati.
Right? So I guess my question is that my own personal question before I get to my desk is is the name of his recent book,
which I don't know if you've had the time to read, but you know, he posits, in my view, rather provocatively,
but in many respects rather compellingly that, you know, there isn't sufficient continuity to really refer to this as the same tradition in the
MacIntyre sense that Assad posits this notion of Islam being a discursive tradition.
And so even these modern sort of like modernist groups can be considered to be part of the Islamic tradition.
But in a sense, they have made a very deliberate rupture with that tradition.
As you illustrate. And so they can't really be considered part of the same tradition.
I'd love to hear your take on that and that the serious question is,
would somebody expand on the definition and scope of what he's written in Persian, but Ayatollah al-Ahmar, please?
This concept seems similar to the narrative healthy, which is obviously the key concept that is currently sort of ruling Iran and nobody
us that my understanding was that such a concept was really a concept rather.
But it looks like within some ism, there is a comparable sort of notion.
OK, thank you. Thank you so much. So and thank you, Mary, for your question.
So I did not mention anything about something scored with Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Just to be clear, and I don't claim that all of my even made this kind of proposition themselves look in my current work.
There is a general thesis that is obviously and can maintain in the field in relation to the secularisation of law in Egypt,
the famous work by Assad and others, which show this very clearly.
However,
I would say that intellectual history is insufficient to give us insights into the processes by which that was again brought into materiality people.
I would claim in my current work that if we give a much more insight and attention to what I claim is procedure.
Procedure is a very mundane, very technical field of research, I think is much more.
It is not interesting side of historical research. I think this is actually you must look more carefully into this.
For example, Egypt started to get the rise of regulatory ahead of it.
Now we have everything. Has Hatzalah OK? Is it always a regulation of some sort?
Liberals have for organising where donkeys goes in Egypt is elected, I would imagine.
Would the mosques? So this everywhere the delay, but also the advocates have warned ever how so so many things going on in this regard.
I think we should look into what the details of this procedural law that made them some of these things possible.
For example, in Islamic Courts, we learn in the UAE in the 1980s.
Less than 20 percent of Islamic Courts decision was actually applied.
I was shocked about that. I wasn't aware.
So how that was possible, I learnt that in the late in nineteen ninety seven, the heyday of past a quote unquote administrative position,
this vision saying that those who will enforce Islamic Courts decisions are, quote unquote jihad,
they are literally means administrative employees is no longer a kind of law enforcement.
If you think about it, this is completely unlike how the.
How this natural course is to operate my point of departure here is saying this a certain type of procedural
rules that made possible why people started going to these national courts and not Islamic Courts,
not because these things are interesting or new and modern,
but for procedural and much more mature reasons that made similarly difficult for you to get your positions and your judgement to be in force.
Getting anything out of this is more expensive and so on and so forth.
So I think this is a much more interesting side to look into onto into the details
of that process of securitisation and how this institution demarcation functions.
To my surprise, if you ask anybody who study American law today, for example,
we don't think we know everything about who the American judges, the names, what they do, the position, the politics, the favourite foods.
If we ask the same question about Muslim judges in Egypt, no one knows anything about the names for these guys came from.
So they are nameless. We reduce them into a position of law. We have nothing about the networking, the training.
Again, I think this is completely not something that we should undertake.
We need to look into this more carefully in this way.
So so this all in a class classroom, people thought until 2008, but the Muslim judges still today, there's no any history is of.
Was there any of the Ministry of Justice in Egypt still today? Who is this minister?
Is the picture. It's very difficult to find. The individual details are completely out there, but you have to look into this.
I found this to be more important than simply asserting a general abstract theories about how things are defunct in Egypt.
Because without these details, I think we'll lose a lot to a question about Islamists.
Look, Middle East expert in the field. You're the expert.
My point was just a basic observation that people would say what Islamists are not engaging with Jane.
So and my point, why join it and why nobody does embody inform how the Egyptian state functions today?
Domestic price, for example, I'm working with this Egyptian Constitutional Court, which claims that in Egypt,
the president is Israeli in Egypt, the Constitution, that the judiciary made clear that the president is no longer really.
But that court affirm that the president is willing. I wonder where this coming from.
This is not coming from to Egypt, for sure. This is this is wrong.
I'm going to stop there because a lot of questions.
But this is the funny part about this that it's unclear how the modern government functions allow themselves some of these authorities by simply,
we take for granted that somehow the Egyptian Supreme Court in Egypt today, in the moment which is speaking somehow can sell the Koran.
And so if you meet some of these judges in person or meet an Iraqi or Syrian judge in person, we'll see the immediate difference in training language.
There is receptive to Islamic law. And yet with that firm, something that is Islamic law, we should somehow take that for granted.
And this is what the reason why Islamic law in Egypt. I'm not taking them seriously.
I think this is completely something to be approached further.
Thank you. Thank you very much. Sami. I don't know if you want to sort of take things any further.
I understand we need to wrap up in about five minutes and we do have a couple
of very brief questions and they seem to be more about the capable state.
So am I. I was going to redirect them to Sami, and I, as per usual in these wonderful seminars,
have a whole list of questions which could take us on for another hour.
But I'm not going to sort of torture anyone at this point in time.
But just these two questions very briefly, and I think they may be the same question from Mohammed Shahin,
who asks What is the extent of the what was the extent of the Austrian state in Egypt?
And the other one basically we phrases this is the extent of the influence that the Ottoman state, in particular, Egypt.
So this is more for.
You think you know, OK, so answer this question with based on what time period that we are discussing the time period that internally can occur,
only focussing on its colonial Egypt when the British occupied in 1882.
In this context, the British had actual material military power and administration over Egypt under the Ottoman course.
So in this framework, the Ottomans had some say on on some things and not others so.
So to have a specific kind of answer to the controls of that power?
Well, I don't think we can, but we can see some of these glimpses of the Ottoman, for example, Ottoman.
So one has to issue a four man one with the appointments of the PDP, for example, even if the idea was was fired by the British.
But usually they need to have an official. Ultimately, it's an edict or decree to allow a new position in a new.
You have to come to power some of the issues with regards to Egypt seeking loans,
issues with regard to going to international treaties that are kind of the ultimate has always been involved.
Some of this conversation in terms of the internal administration of the Egypt that was really completely separate to some extent,
to do to a great extent. However, Islamic Courts ironically continue to be a symbol of optimum political sovereignty in Egypt because look,
Islamic courts across what I call East London under the Ottomans.
If you go and the target stretches in front of a Muslim judge in Jerusalem or Muslim judge in Anatolia,
a Muslim judge in Syria, Muslim religion, Egypt, all of the judgements where valid.
If you just bring the judgement to Egypt and it enforces them for you, there's no problem at all.
OK, so the assumption then that that system was unified, it is part of how the Ottoman order is to function.
Now that, of course, can a completely diminished after were one.
So again, the question can be answered different ways that will depend on exactly what the institutions,
what table domains would like to investigate and so on and so forth.
Thank you very much. I think I'll hand over to Faisal at this point. Yes. So let shall we give the last word to Negin and then we can simply.
Well, all I want to say is that it is a very rich discussion, and I'm very glad that that we had it.
I think that the question of whether or not Salih adequately engages with with Jordanian
instead of the Egyptian constitution of 1923 is not the answer to the question,
of course, is not why should he?
If he doesn't, but the question is why he doesn't and to compare him with other Islamist thinkers of the period when back did.
And that itself will, I think, go a long way in explaining, for instance, from the legal point of view,
one of the most interesting things about Islamic Courts in the 19th century is that as the state becomes more secular,
the jurists in fact become more independent. So this that secularity,
the secular quotient in the political apparatus becomes a lot more fortified as a result of a number of factors in the 19th century.
And then the jurists become more independent and they adjudicate and they theorise in in in completely new ways.
There's a wonderful article by Chris Christie a burner on on the on the legal history of Iran in the 19th century, and which work is precisely on new,
I mean, completely new innovations in Islamic contracts, the printing to replace where you would not expect to to study as the locus of legal change.
But in the study of contracts, which you know as a as a very prevalent branch of Islamic law, has a long history of completely new contracts,
new ideas of contracts that emerge in the 19th century as the legal system changes
in response to the growth of or the development of a secular state apparatus.
So I think that the last word on that debate is yet to be said.
We have to stay tuned in for it. But thank you everyone for it.
I very much enjoyed this session. Thank you.
Thank you so much. And I have actually pulled up for what the next session is.
Would you like me to do it or do you have? Yes, please, please announce it.
So, you know, just very briefly, thank you to everyone for attending this week.
It's really been a wonderful and very engaging seminar. And in two weeks time, this is a fortnightly seminar.
We'll be having Nasrin Badawi and Murad Edris both sort of coming in from different parts of the world.
Nasrin will be speaking about debating. It's on the theme is violence, and Nasreen will be talking about debating militancy in the modern world.
Whereas Murad will be talking about theorising, calling colonialism, capitalism and violence in an Islamist key.
So we'll be back with the Islamists before long. But thank you so much to both of you.
Thanks, Faisal.
And it really has been an eye-opening hour and a half, and we look forward to having you in Oxford in-person again before long and until next time.
Have a good evening.