So welcome all to the fourth iteration of the Oxford Political Hall seminar,
and we are delighted to welcome today Nasrin Badawi from the American University in Cairo and morality degrees from the University of Michigan,
who will both be addressing the issue of violence in different times and places.
I will invite some. I'll ask me my co-convenor to introduce them properly.
The stream will begin and speak for 20 minutes and then be followed by Murad for another 20 minutes, after which we shall have Q&A.
And if you should have any questions, please put them either in the Q&A box anonymously or under your own name or in the chat box.
And if you're unable absolutely to do that, you can raise your hand and I can or someone can call upon you and you can start
asking you questions during the talks so as not to wait until they finish.
So with that, I'll hand over to you long. Thank you very much and welcome to business Raine and Murad.
It's really wonderful to have you here from across the Atlantic or the Mediterranean, as the case may be,
and I'm just going to introduce the three in your biographical background and then please feel free to sort of launch into your discussion.
So in the Badawi is a an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at the American University in Cairo.
He is an associate professor of public and international law, and she received her Ph.D. from the School of Oriental and African Studies.
He holds an Al-Alam in international comparative law and a licence and a B.A. in Political Science.
So badly has experienced working in the United Nations within the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
on Refugee Law and has offered consultancy work to several organisations on humanitarian and Islamic law.
Your relatively recently published book in 2019 is in touch with some key recipients on the regulation of armed conflict with Israel,
and we look forward to your lecture on Islamic conceptions of violence in the modern period.
So without further ado, please go ahead.
Thank you so much. It's a pleasure to be with you here today, and I'm looking forward to the discussion we're going to have today.
I'm just going to give a brief introduction of what I intend to talk about today.
And the the focus of my talk today is how different Muslim actors have attempted to reformulate and interpret
Islamic regulations on armed conflict and rules of war and Islamic jurisprudence in the modern context.
And I'm going to look at three main actors.
The first actor that I'm going to look at is Muslim institutions with a focus on Al-Azhar and its approach to Islamic rules of war.
And then I'm going to look at two examples of mainstream scholars who are independent scholars whereby highly the Syrian scholar and useful.
Just to give a sense of mainstream approaches to Islamic law, to Islamic laws of war.
And then I'm going to shift to a discussion of militant groups and their interpretations of
Islamic laws of war with a focus on al-Qaida and the Islamic State to start out this discussion.
I think that one there's an important framing question premise that needs to be taken,
which is understanding the dilemma that many of Muslim states in the Muslim world that we're faced with,
which is the post-colonial moment and them and a move towards independence and understanding how Muslim
institutions and how Muslim scholars interpreted Islamic law cannot be separated from that moment.
With the with the rise in pressure for legal reform and the assertion on the primacy and the supremacy of European inspired laws,
including international law. We see a shift towards an attempt towards an assertion of Islamic law and see with international humanitarian law.
So in the 50s and the 60s, we see a rise in scholarship that addresses the question of Islamic laws of war,
whether within the Muslim world or from Muslim scholars who are in Western academia,
such as having the more magical warrior and from within the Muslim world itself.
I have extensively at Alonzo's conferences, the National Polls Islamia, which is a scholarly community under under the auspices of Al-Azhar,
and it has conducted seven annual conferences to address issues of Islamic rule, and we see a focus on Islamic.
Laws of war and scholarship, understanding Islamic laws of war in that era.
And my argument is that that's I mean that focus is heavily influenced by an attempt
to emulate the principles of international law with regards to come back and see.
For example, a scholar like Mohammed Posada, who has dedicated extensive focus to Islamic laws of war,
offers an interpretation of Islamic law that largely. Aligns with our understanding of Islamic law in order to do that.
My argument is that much of significant features of Islamic law are suppressed in order to in order to arrive at that Congress.
One important feature that is suppressed is the question of diversity and that this is closely connected to an attempt to offer an authoritative,
singular interpretation of Islamic law,
but also closely connected to the idea of singular law and the idea of the sovereign authority establishing one interpretation of law.
So we see diversity suppressed and issues that have been contested and have been heavily negotiated and elaborated
upon by jurists leading to different interpretations are largely treated as a singular interpretation.
For that, I'll use the example of combatants or the example of who may be targeted under the Islamic legal tradition.
Of course, the notion of come back and see in and of itself is a modern notion that is heavily associated with the rise of full-fledged armies,
the under the auspices of a sovereign state, so it cannot be separated from that.
But in order to offer an interpretation that those who do not participate in fighting may not be targeted.
We see a selective reliance on the jurisprudence and suppression of the diverse
views of jurisprudence of different jurists who offer varying interpretations.
For example, if we look at the classic tradition, we see a varying use.
So with on the one hand, you have Hanafi views such as showband you, for example,
who list certain categories which may not be targeted because they're unable to participate in fighting.
And that list is rather expensive, expensive to include the categories that are common to those who are familiar with the samples of war,
such as women, children, older men, the blind, the crippled hard labourers and so on and so forth.
So an explicit list. And we move away from that.
Then we see, for example, to the other end of the spectrum.
We see scholars like al-shughur and hasn't who assert that men who have reached the age of puberty maybe may be targeted.
So a very different interpretation. And within those different interpretations,
there is an extensive examination of the force's extensive examination of prophetic traditions and practises to arrive at that interpretation.
But all of that is suppressed in the modern interpretation in order to arrive at that singular interpretation.
The argument that those who do not participate in fighting may not be targeted.
Another feature that is closely connected to the question of suppression of diversity is selectivity and selectivity that is often incoherent.
So unlike, for example, in earlier approaches to Islamic law,
where we see jurists following a particular school of thought and they espouse that jurisprudential school's positions,
we see an eclectic choice that is largely reminiscent of the process of the future.
But with with but with no coherence, so a shuffling might be relied on in a particular position to advance a certain view.
And his use might be disregarded if they are if they are not seen as befitting of the argument that
the author is making and that approach and that methodology of interpreting Islamic laws of war,
I argue, continues to live on until the present day.
So another significant stage that we see Islamic jurists confronted with is the moment of 9-11 in the post-9 and post-9
11 and the rise in arguments about Islamic militancy and the surge in arguments about how we interpret Islamic laws.
Treatment of 9-11 leads to again, a renewed interest in that,
and we see very similar approaches with with the addition of a new significant
approach which is reliant on older regimes of jurisprudence that may have offered,
may have been developed for a different set of acts to end trying to apply them to the crime of terrorism.
And I used the example of Arabic book, which is a regime that in the classic jurisprudence,
is often seen as reserved for highway robbery and banditry,
explicitly criminal activity that deals with and and a crime that receives the highest,
perhaps the harshest punishment in an Islamic law and taking that and extrapolating it to the crime of terrorism.
And that becomes a very common feature of the approach of mainstream jurisprudence and particularly
those who are affiliated with the state in order to deal with the crime of terrorism.
In parallel to that, we see suppression, complete suppression or silence on the regime of Bashar,
which is the regime that deals with which which which has normally been the
regime that deals with political violence under classical Islamic jurisprudence.
The reason Bali is suppressed is not surprising because the regime of Barry is to some extent rather agnostic to whether or not you have the right
to rebel and focuses more extensively on regulating the acts of rebellion and provides extensive protections for the different warring parties,
including extensive protections for the rebelling group.
I mean, so you have scholars who argue that rebel that rebellion groups, if they flee, if they flee the battle, they may not be pursued there.
Their wounded may not be dispatched and other arguments that are largely restrictive,
including extensive restrictions on the confiscation of their books property that is not necessarily a regime
that lends itself to utilisation by a sovereign state in our understanding of the modern sovereign state.
Hence, it's not surprising that it is disregarded and that there is that we see leaning towards a much more permissive
regime in terms of punishment and a regime that is that provides a harsher judgement of the act of violence itself,
which is the regime of of heroin.
Two, to a great extent, that is the moment, I mean, or that is the general discourse that we see until the rise of ISIS,
but the rise of ISIS, and I'm going to come back to that when I talk about militant groups.
Is a perplexing moment for mainstream scholars,
because ISIS collapses old categories just as the category of Arab and Betty is collapsed by mainstream jurists,
ISIS even goes a step further by expanding apostasy extensively beyond any other expansion that we see by other militant
groups in order to resort to the regime of apostasy to to justify their practises with the different warring parties,
including civilians living under the control of the Muslim regimes who are deemed apostates by the Islamic State.
However, the response by official mainstream institutions does not necessarily live up to the premise of fighting against that change.
In some areas, they're successful in other areas. They seem to falter.
So when it comes to food, for example, we see a very solid assertion on.
The classic doctrine, the classic Ashwari doctrine of limiting the purview of the fear and limiting the resort to that fear.
And we see a basis there. But when it comes to other.
Areas that ISIS relies or other claims that ISIS makes.
We see a much weaker and resort to draw to the jurisprudence to push back against ISIS and use here the example of hacking me,
the assertion on the need to uphold Islamic law and order for a regime to govern Muslim
societies and the destruction of that is a benchmark to assess Islamist city of the regime.
With that, we see punchlines. We see general statements that do not necessarily offer a serious and concerted
effort to deal with questions of democracy and how and how we understand democracy,
questions of cost of law and how and what the space for positive law is within a legitimate Muslim regime and in the modern context.
And part of my argument is that this is hardly surprising considering the very
difficult terrain that official Muslim institutions are trying to tread,
because on the one hand, they need to assert their legitimacy, they need to maintain their legitimacy.
But on the other hand, their relationships with the different regimes and their relationships with sovereign
states who rely on positive more extensively are strenuous or difficult to to manage.
That makes it very difficult for them to actually address that issue.
But that doesn't go without attempts to make gains.
So one of the main lines that we see asserted by official Muslim institutions is the line of the assertion of reports.
So what extensively we find, I mean aggressive assertions of authority and progressive assertions that Muslims cannot.
Offer a direct interpretation of Islamic law on their own. They need to go to a qualified scholar in order to do that.
As a matter of fact, I think I've in a personal interview with one prominent Muslim jurists in the past.
He made the claim that none other than Muslim jurists should read the texts and attempt to interpret them on their own.
But they should actually go to the scholars to offer that interpretation.
I mean, I see I'm running a little bit out of time. I'll try to come back to some of those issues to end the questions and answers,
but to to a great extent, if we look at the trajectory we see that with.
Independent mainstream scholars, there's more inclination to deal with and problematic as those issues.
So with Upadhyay, for example, we see a more concerted effort to deal with the question of fear with the question of the place of Muslim
regimes and subjects of Muslim regimes in the Muslim world to arrive at a conclusion very similar to another.
But with perhaps a more rigorous interpretation.
But again, we also see the line of of all sorts.
We also saw, for example, if we I mean, on a separate issue on the question of suicide bombing, today,
we reserves the space for the Muslim scholar, for the Muslim jurists to determine when and where is the resort to suicide bombing legitimate?
By associating,
by utilising the tool of Muslim and the toll of Moslehi becomes a tool to also grant the jurist that kind of authority of of interpretation.
On the other end of the spectrum, we see militants who are not who,
I argue are not again who have not escaped the predicament and the dilemma of the
modern nation state and how to deal with their place in the modern nation state.
With alucarda, we see some expansion, extensive expansion of some of the categories relating to targeting,
for example, and we see the same selectivity.
So for example, when it comes to targeting, we see an expansion of indiscriminate targeting beyond the regime of deterrence
and beyond what what is envisioned by scholars under the regime of Tartarus.
And we also see attempts to connect what is not, not necessarily connected.
For example, Zawahiri argues that weapons of mass destruction are attempting to own or utilise weapons of mass
destruction can be compared to indiscriminate targeting by tools such as hurling machines and so on.
This regarding the fact that classical jurists have actually acknowledged some
level of discrimination and those weapons by giving direction to the Muslim Army,
to Earth to attempt to avoid harm that is likely to be inflicted in those situations is hardly imaginable.
In a situation where used to weapons of mass destruction, who are, by their nature,
indiscriminate and a much more expansive fashion than those weapons.
And the weakest point or the weakest link that we see in a al-Zawahiri's jurisprudence is again,
in no way the utilisation of the logic of the modern nation state to argue for the denial of the regime of women.
So the regime of women is a regime that is arguably a very individualised system under classical Islamic jurisprudence.
Anyone could could grant them not just the state, not just the the caliph would grant them and anyone could.
Of course, the Caliph could revoke that women. But but it's a it's a much more fluid system than we see in the modern nation state.
But he utilises the authority of the modern nation state and the logic of the modern nation state to to deny the possibility of individual amend,
thereby again employing the same methods of selectivity that we see associated with mainstream scholars.
And the other end of the spectrum, we see a new animal, which is the Islamic State and its approach to Islamic jurisprudence.
Arguably, I mean, even the rigour of analysis is as much weaker in comparison to al-Zawahiri's work.
For example, the resort to jurisprudence is much weaker, but we see an expansion and extensive expansion of the notion of apostasy.
To include Muslims who live under so-called apostate regimes by relying on scholars such as Eden Hazard and Tamir,
despite the fact that that those same scholars have in some instances acknowledged that Muslims who
live under regimes was whose adherence to Islamic law may be seen as subjects such as Egyptians.
In the case of or the margin, the very famous Martin fatwa issued by the Premier that led us to a very different conclusion,
thereby collapsing all categories and denying and their opposition of any tool of challenge to Islamic law.
And on the other hand, we also see the same resort to the denial of protections of the Shia by expanding the interpretations of apostasy of the Shia.
But most importantly, by denying the applicability of regimes that are so entrenched in Islamic law and namely the regime of Jesus.
So we see the assertion that Christians in Egypt may be targeted simply because they live under a regime that is not Islamic,
which is very odd because it goes against the rationale of a man, at least not even GZA,
or the mean that just because they have been granted a semblance of a safety pact and more importantly,
because at the end of the day with the classical doctrine, then masterpiece is offered.
And once it's offered, there are regulations for how you it?
And there are regulations for how, how they provide for it, and that is completely silenced in the debate that we see associated with ISIS.
I'm going to come back to that, perhaps. The discussion important to take more time, but the the general gist of that analysis is that this plot,
whether or not we're dealing with groups who deny the existence of the modern nation
state or groups or entities that are entrenched within the modern nation state,
there's no escaping it. There is no escaping its impact on how we understand Islamic laws of war today and
how that understanding is so entrenched in our logic of how to deal with militancy.
Thank you so much for three nights. This is an incredibly impressive piece of 20 minutes.
I mean, this is so much packed into this and you brought so many fascinating voices into the conversation
and so much analytical nuance to reflecting on how the Muslim nation state has an impact on this.
The way in which sort of scholars are ostensibly completely different stripes actually coming to
Islamic law or to the classical tradition in similar ways because of what modernity has wrought.
I'm sure this will elicit a lot of discussion on the process attendees, and please feel free to type in your questions at this stage.
We're going to take the questions after Miraz session,
but right now I'm going to switch over to one of the trees and Marathi trees is a associate professor of
political science at the University of Michigan with his doctoral degree from the University of Pennsylvania.
And he has a wide range of interests in political theory and the history of political thought, including in war and peace.
Critical theory, conceptual history, anti-colonial and postcolonial thought.
Political theology, internet like you basically are interested in everything pertaining to Islamic politics,
and I think this is reflected, of course, in your writing as well. So your book again,
relatively recent book came out in 2019 was entitled Was War and War for Peace Genealogies of Abundant Ideas in Western and Islamic Thought,
and you have other work that you're working on right now.
I think you have another book planned, which currently is tentatively titled Out of History, Genealogies and Language, Time and Violence.
So I look forward to that as well. But you'll be talking about theorising colonialism, capitalism and violence and an Islamist key.
So let me hand it over to you for the next 20 minutes. Thank you.
Thank you. Faisal, thank you. Summer for the invitation.
I'm excited to be here sharing a mix of recent and new work with you, and I'm excited to be in conversation with you.
Well, I'll be focussing on excavating some unusual themes from say it perturbs writings,
say it is known as the main theorist of 20th century Islamism and is often considered
to have been the intellectual backbone of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood in the 1950s.
Today, he's mostly red for his prison writings, which are considered far more radical.
I'll refer to some lesser known works from the early 1950s, including articles published in the journals Dawa and Reseda,
his neglected peace plan for the formation of an Islamic Federation.
And his diagnoses of capitalism, colonialism, Orientalism and race as interlocking in a formation of violence.
I'll also work in some remarks about the journal Dawa.
I'm currently trying to work through a few thousand pages of the journal, which was published over the course of four years,
and this is all part of a project on theorising of violence, colonialism and capitalism by Islamists in the 1950s.
So I'm promising a lot, so let's jump right in.
I'll frame my comments with four premises at first premise, and this should not be controversial.
Muslims and Islamists are theorists of violence, and I mean this in two ways.
On the one hand, Islamists aren't simply occasional agents of violence.
They theorise their own violence and to treat this as theory rather than, for example,
mere propaganda is to understand is to understand it as an intervention into an ongoing set of debates, ideas and practises.
On the other hand, Islamists also theorise the already pre-existing and prevalent structures of violence,
and certainly in the 1950s, they understood these two to be intimately linked.
Though I'm focussing today on the analysis of the latter, the pre-existing structures of violence there genealogies their idioms and their connexions.
Second, put up theories of violence, have numerous underappreciated resonances and linkages across the history of political thought,
including in the writings of KÖNNTE, the Phenom, Edward Saeed and others.
These linkages are, I believe, entirely incidental,
but drawing attention to them can help us diagnose the politics of contemporary disciplinary formations
or why we read certain thinkers in certain ways alongside some thinkers and not others for some themes,
but not others.
Third, recovering this cross-section of Islamist thought on violence brings into view authorisations of how violence is linked with colonialism,
capitalism and Orientalism. So it moves us away from constructions of Islamic thought in terms of fanaticism and ideology.
And it forces us to reckon with a different radical thread that is palpable in these archives,
one that treats fanaticism actually as a colonial discourse and then diagnoses its inner workings.
It helps us exceptionalism, the thematics that are assigned to particular bodies of knowledge.
So it's against what we might call the contemporary choreography of critique.
Finally, in tension with much of what I've said,
situating put up within a broader sphere of Islamist intellectual production in the 1950s shows an entire discursive structure.
Many writers, many publications that were reflecting precisely on these very terms,
although theorists and historians of Islamism tend to focus on individual thinkers and their books, and I include myself in this.
Looking at the social, political and institutional life of journals was a way towards a different and I think, exciting model of giving theory.
So let me offer a few example, a few examples of these premises juxtapositions and provocations.
First Federation Auto and cut.
And this one will be brief. One of the chapters of my book, which some I mentioned War for peace.
I read in relation to cut specifically how each constructs a federation that begins with domestic legal reform,
then a federation of these states banding together and then how they police the globe against enemies
of peace instead of consider of colonial powers policing each other and their former colonies.
Put up solution is for the colonised Muslims to police the coloniser and the entire globe.
The only thing I'll add here is about how to stop and can't critically diagnose
how appeals to peace have operated as covers for violence and then unironically,
each offers a three part peace plan that, in the name of peace, authorises a particular form of exceptional violence.
So these formations reflect and re entrench hierarchies within humanity.
I'll leave cons here. For now, we can pick them up later if there's interest to war and empire or put up with Dubois.
In his book on Universal Peace,
Otto observes that the American intervention in Korea reveals the violent colonial truths of a self-styled democratic bloc.
Interestingly, although political theorists today don't really say much about the Korean War.
Dubois, too, situated this war as putting on full display an American war industry and in fact both put up and the boys.
They draw attention to the institutions of colonial peace and how they enable particular kinds of war ones that
oftentimes don't go by the name of war for both the prevailing colonial capitalist and racialised peace facilitates war,
violence and subjugation across the globe and both imagined and anti-colonial federation.
Although, bro, the war drums are beating. There it is, a prospect knocking on the ears of the wretched of humanity.
I heard it before in America, even before the onset of the Korean War.
Everyone who's lived in America during the last two years clearly has understood that America will wage war, and he goes on.
Anyone who has followed American journalism and its other media apparatus through radio, cinema, universities,
colleges clearly understood that this is a nation preparing to wage war and it is packing public opinion with this idea and the war is coming,
he says, because the heads of American capital are in dire need of a new war.
They generally have engaged in massacres no matter how much their propaganda waves around the names of ethical principles and humanitarian goals.
And his primary examples are Korea and Palestine, a sort of exemplifying colonial hypocrisy.
His 1953 essay, Principles of the Free World two observes that the name the Free World is a cover for colonialism in Tunis,
Marrakesh, Kenya, Vietnam, the free world. The rips apart the skin freedom and strangles free people everywhere.
So this view of colonial discourse rhetoric and misrepresentation as tactics across the globe.
It produces a geography in which North Africa and the Near East, Eastern Europe and East Asia,
Africa and Southeast Asia are all bound together, sharing the same fates and the same problems.
Whereas attention to his federation would trace a geography that maps onto the Muslim world whereby it polices the globe against injustice.
This diagnostic geography puts Muslims and non-Muslims into the same colonial presence and attention to either, I think,
helps us to unsaleable Islamism to locate authorisations of colonialism and enter colonialism as internal to and as overlapping with Islamist thought.
Three. Capitalism consciousness or fennel with put up put up theorises capitalism, I was surprised to witness.
We already saw him linking capitalism to war. But he also links it to the colonial management of culture and consciousness.
And on top of all that, he uses the language of critical political economy to make a number of his arguments.
So oftentimes these kinds of borrowings are read in terms of the sneaky Islamists trying to co-opt the language of his opponents.
And maybe I think they can also be read generative fully as reflecting the success of Marxism and educating its potential opponents.
And although I'm not going to make much reference to it today,
there's an entire issue in a dogma that is an analysis of capitalism, class and property, and it draws heavily on Marxist idioms.
So there are both phenomena, finale and Marxist resonances here.
In his book The Battle of Islam and Capitalism, he explains that the English always knew that their armies would have to leave Egypt someday,
and so they ensured Egypt's dependence on them.
He offers a version of dependency theory,
asserting that one of the central pillars of colonial control is to make the colony economically dependent on the metropole.
So says the English established colonialism, institutional supports and the economic field by occupying Egyptian markets and
by attempting to close off other international markets to Egyptian products.
And all this. He says, however, would not be enough for colonialism to persist if not for the colonisation of consciousness and intellect,
which colonialism has attended to over the last century.
The white English have vacated governmental offices in order for the dark English to take their place,
whose consciousness and intellect are colonised, assembled according to colonialism and its objectives.
So having shaped the Ministry of Education, he says the white English can now be confident that the dark English will continue their mission.
Colonialism, in other words, conscripts those who exalt freedom and culture and those who oversee education in its battles against Islam.
Whether they realise it or not, they produce curricula on Islamic studies that simply catalogue military assaults, wars, incidents, events.
And he says that the upshot is that Islam was a large military battle and that it had never been an intellectual,
social or humanitarian battle as well.
The narration of Islam as a sequence of violence and events is one strand of Orientalism, which is something I'll speak to in a few minutes.
Iotop does not name it, and he doesn't connect it with the rest of his observations.
But he does claim that colonial education culminates in colonialism without colonists.
So for the colonisation of consciousness and intellect to reach its high point even after the departure of the occupation.
So all non-white peoples, he says, are taught to measure themselves in relation to the white man and his history.
To denigrate their own histories, people in America talk about the white man as though they are talking about a half God and people of colour,
like Egyptians and Arabs generally, as though they are describing a half human totems.
Framing of historical narratives and world politics in terms of race consciousness
and a racial war took place immediately after his visit to the United States.
And the key point here is that Potter was interested in colonial consciousness, especially cultural and educational institutions,
newspapers, books, histories, all of which narrated the glories of France, Britain and America and degraded and humiliated others, he said.
So this includes American Empire, which he mocked as trying to create an Americanised Islam, its own brand of Islam,
one that was de politicised and that marked all other forms of Islam as dangerous and illegitimate.
And this is why I put up calls for destroying the colonialism in our consciousness towards a new pedagogy.
With this pedagogy, all people, particularly new generations,
should be educated about colonialism, injustices and the injustices committed by the white man.
Whereas Potter gives much of the Senate, much of this account in an article titled Our Number One Enemy, The White Man.
Interestingly, this is the lesson that the front page of Dawar gave on March 30th, 1951,
in an article by the editor titled Colonialism is our number one enemy and that article said the Colonial.
Azam operates in the same exact way as disbelief that no matter who is colonised and who, it divides people and it divides their consciousness.
If Muslims wish for freedom, the article said,
then they have to resist colonialism and they can do this by revealing all of its actions and all of its misdeeds.
Then it ends optimistically. After that, we shall went back to club and capitalism.
In addition to dependency, auto refers to the alliance between a dictatorship and the despotism or autocracy of capital.
So, he says, colonialism is always concerned that the masses should not rule themselves because it then becomes difficult to subdue them.
Thus, there must be a governing dictatorial class that possesses autocratic authority and great wealth.
This class is the one with which colonialism can have dealings. This is because first, its numbers are few.
And second, it depends on colonialism to persist and needs its support in the face of the masses.
This class is in charge of subduing the masses and governing them.
Colonialism disappears from view behind it.
Put up the terminology and his class analysis have their provenance and the writings of Marx and Lenin.
The terms appear with neither citation nor explanation, but at the very least,
they show us the adaptation of the critique of capitalism into an Islamist state.
For Orientalism or before said, the two penultimate chapters of the Battle of Islam and Capitalism form an ark.
Now the first one is doubts about the rule of Islam and enumerates various caricatures of Islam,
whereas the second is enmities towards the rule of Islam, and it describes different enemies, different antagonisms.
The six doubts are Islam's primitivism the authority of chef's tyranny.
The vagueness of scripture. Haram and the oppression of minorities.
But the selection is important today because these six reflect the definition of Islam as the antithesis of modernity,
liberalism, freedom and civilisation. So the idea that Islam tries to return to the 7th century to tents in the desert casts it not simply as lagging,
not simply as obsolete, but as a destructive refusal of modernity.
And he says, you know, people imagine Islamic governance to mean tents in the desert, Bedouins on camels, Arabs in caves in which there would be.
And here he really seems to be channelling Thomas Hunt.
So I'm pretty sure he not never read that there would be no building, no civilisation, no sciences and no arts and no poetry.
He criticises these doubts as generalisations, misrepresentations, projections,
ones that limit Islam's temporal resolution and merely reflect the kinds of negative models that the capitalist
and communist blocs have permitted to appear in the world in order to repel people from a more critical view.
The repertoire of doubts is also important because it inserts put up through his responses into the lineage of critiques of Orientalism.
The repertoire of tropes, after all, has an Orientalist pedigree and as he says, they serve the Orientalist discourses and interests.
So his critique here is about how representations and stereotypes masquerade as knowledge.
And he then describes six enemies of Islam. These are the crusaders, colonists, exploiters, professional men of religion, the immoral and communists.
Some of these enemies rely on Orientalism. So as it turns out, the crusaders supply the spirit of the colonisers,
and the exploiters and men of religion rely on the colonisers understanding of Islam.
So the coloniser and the Orientalist are tightly linked.
So much so that Potter says the notion of Orientalist objectivity or neutrality functions as a mask.
It justifies colonialism and aims to transform the colonised population's consciousness so that they internalise.
It sends its comprehensive studies, he says, aimed to neutralise the seeds of resistance.
So, he writes,
Orientalism was established in order to aid colonialism from a scientific point of view in order to extend its roots into the intellectual soil.
But we hear we worship Orientalist simple mindedly. If it occurs to you to adopt the innocence of these saints, then your uncultured.
You're a fanatic who brings in religion at every opportunity.
Also recall my earlier point about which histories are narrated and how self-important
this is all ideologically bound up with Orientalist and racial colonial structures.
Let me end by highlighting a couple of things.
First, about discussions of education curricula, doubts and consciousness, referred to the production of knowledge about Islam.
So in an untimely moment put of 30 years before Said's Orientalism, 12 years before Anwar Abdel Malik's,
Orientalism and crisis would be theorising Orientalism its complicity,
its complicity in the colonial project and the fantasies that it sets into motion and rationalises for European authors and policymakers,
as well as for colonised Muslim intellectuals. This is not to simply say that the anti-colonial critique of Orientalism predates Sayed
and that various Arab and non-Arab intellectuals should be inserted into its history,
which is, of course, true. It is, however, and may be somewhat irreverent.
Tree, a reference to the to put autumn's writings on knowledge production as internal to the genealogy of theorising Orientalism.
So it's to trace a question around which thinkers and texts have permission to speak about which topics,
or to borrow a different phrase of Edwards seeds,
which have the permission to narrate a critique of Orientalism capitalism and their structures, or to even be in a genealogy of critique.
It's to ask who's authorised to theorise about what kinds of topics or what I earlier referred to as the choreography of critique.
Second, bottoms discussions contain a composite of analytics from colonialism, misrepresentations and denials of violence across the globe.
It's the structures of dispossession and a class analysis derived from Marxism to the political theology that underlies secularised.
anti-Islamic colonialism and knowledge is all in these overlapping frames.
The composite analytics draw in multiple regions across the colonised world into the same fate,
one enabled by complementary structures of dispossession.
Third, although I've only gestured to them situated in relation to various journals like Adama, can help us shift where relocate theory,
where we locate authorisations of violence and how we locate Islamist thought in relation to it.
It is to De Exceptionalist, the Muslim thinker, twice in terms of which scripts,
themes and connexions can come into view and in terms of the intellectuals embeddedness and a broader network of discourse.
Since I believe I have another two minutes or so.
Let me give you one last example dowa in 1951, put up calls French barbarism the greatest threat to the Muslim world and this,
he says, is the same France that buckled its knees when Hitler sneezed.
The juxtaposition interrupts the European discourses of the barbarism of Nazi ism and
the barbarism of the colonised to draw out the barbarism of the European colonisers.
So he says that France continues to send its tanks, artillery and its fighter jets against Marrakesh.
He then offers an inventory of French atrocities with dates and places 1789,
Egypt 1925 and nineteen forty one Damascus 1812 1941 1944 in 1951, Marrakesh 1830.
In 1945, Algeria 41 villages decimated and he lists other massacres across North Africa with the same dynamics,
saying that the same dynamics also described British attacks on Egypt and Italian attacks on present day Libya.
He contrasts these atrocities with love for France, which he calls using religious terminology.
Worship, murder and its admirers are friends of slaves, added.
And what they do is glorifying yourself beyond the institutional mechanisms that enable this worship are French institutes and Egypt.
These are sites of indoctrination or re-education ones that mask barbarism and instil awe.
And this is why France, he says, opposes having an Egyptian institute in Tangier.
This would foster an anti-colonial orientation one facilitated by the feeling of a shared Muslim heritage, which in turn facilitates Muslim unity.
So this mixing of theological,
geopolitical and institutional registers marks a violence that works through the production of a cultural institutional apparatus.
Its stages, the problem of anti-colonial consciousness and colonial violence into a direct confrontation of pedagogy.
Thank you, and I look forward to our conversation. Thank you very much, Mara.
I'm really I think these papers work wonderfully with each other, and both of them are in their own ways, you know, wonderfully evocative.
While we're waiting for people in the audience to write in their questions or raise their hands, I know some also has some.
Let me begin with a couple of my own, if I may, Mr. Green, as he was speaking, I just thought how?
How well the responses.
Of Muslim authorities that you describe parallel the responses of many Western governments facing the same, if you will, threat.
And what struck me in particular is the focus initially when you're speaking about Al Qaida on the.
The law dealing with Highwomen and banditry as opposed to rebellion.
And of course, this is it reminded me so much of the resort to piracy in the European legal order and therefore the
exceptional ization of the militant outside everything that is regular and outside rights altogether.
That's one thing. And the other thing, of course, has to do with the anxiety of authority or the reassertion of the authority,
which you also find perhaps not so much vis-a-vis AL or ISIS's form of militancy,
but more generally in contemporary discussions of law and legality in North America and Western Europe,
where it's precisely the nature of a legitimate authority and where it is to be located, but is in question.
So these are not the same things or one of them might be the same and not the other, but I just wondered if you might have any.
Words on how you think the two go together structurally beyond the specific political and intellectual context that that your talk addressed.
Thank you. So those are very interesting questions on the first point.
Of course, exceptionalism is is the name of the game.
When it comes to law, it's always easier to argue for an exception than it is to reformulate the rule.
And as a matter of fact, the dealing with al-Qaida is as prominent in the assertion of a very well known exception in international humanitarian law,
which is the category of the unlawful combatant and the claims about unlawful combatants, i.e. the terror advocated by the United States,
arguing that al-Qaida fighters are neither combatants who deserve prisoners of war status nor there, nor are they civilians,
and therefore they belong to a category that enjoys enjoys neither of the privileges that we see associated with either.
So that is in no way unique to legal argumentation.
And as a matter of fact, also, I mean, one interesting thing that you mentioned when it comes to police,
I mean, going in tandem with Western governments arguments is that to some extent,
as a matter of fact, going in tandem with those arguments and I mean, ironically, so there's I mean,
there's a fixation on proving that Islamic law is as humane as international humanitarian law is.
This is this is very clear.
But in doing that, there's very little disregard to how international humanitarian law challenges and legitimate violence and its own ways.
And as we've seen in critical scholarship examining international humanitarian law extensively.
But you also suppress areas. Even if we if we take that assumption that there is a possibility that you limit violence and you regulate violence,
it suppresses your claim to an even more protective regime that exists within the Islamic legal tradition,
which is the regime of birth, which offers protections that definitely surpass international humanitarian laws.
Protections of non-international armed conflicts. Of course, there are so many.
I mean, I don't want to be reproducing the are the functional comparison between international humanitarian law and Islamic law,
because it's a function of this comparison that I critique and that I believe is has an assumption of a set of values embedded in it.
But you have here a regime that allows you to offer more protections, but that it's completely suppressed,
partly because it does not fit within the current order of governance and partly
because it doesn't really have a resonance in an international military and law.
And this is related to another argument that I make some else about how to compare the disciplines.
So generally speaking, the comparison of the disciplines now is done through a function of silence and the assumption
of values is taken and borrowed from the international humanitarian law tradition.
Whereas there is potentially an alternative way of looking at the disciplines
whereby they actually guide us towards the blind spots that we see in each system.
So rather than espousing an understanding of what law, how law should deal with violence.
You look at how those two disciplines regulate differently. It's a matter of fact.
In this particular instance,
using the regime of rebellion can guide us to the what Berman refers to as the status and the governmental bias in international humanitarian law,
and provide the space for an alternative understanding of how we deal with violence.
Of course, there are some issues that you can see also and in looking at Islamic law,
but that's but there's no side to that end of the analysis of international humanitarian law.
But at the end of the day, coming back to your point, yes, exceptionalism is.
Is, I mean, that's the that's the bread and butter of lawyers to.
To a great extent and has been offered, but argued by many the pretty good works,
it's actually what tells us about much more than what the what the rule tells us about about law.
So can you remind me of the second point?
Second, that to do with the you know what you say about the anxiety authority and reasserting authority in as it were,
if you will, anti-democratic way. So you know,
they are forced on the back foot the words that you're talking about because they have to reclaim authority from its fragmentation and dispersal.
And that also, of course, seems to be a common trope in contemporary Western European and North American
understandings of the vulnerability of of expert expertise and authority.
Yes, I mean, of course, we see that everywhere and we see it with, I mean, we see it in different contexts.
But I do believe that there are particular features that that makes that makes the situation difficult for Muslim jurists.
First of all, this is a tradition that has thrived on diversity,
that has thrived on multiplicity and because it has thrived on diversity and multiplicity.
It has always appreciated distance from the political sorts.
It has always perceived of the distance from the particular authority as a litmus test for legitimacy.
So for Muslim jurists in the present, where I mean political order,
it's very difficult to navigate that terrain because on the one hand, you want to assert your legitimacy you want.
But that that is difficult to do considering if, for example,
we look at the case of Egypt legal measures that have developed over the years to bring institutions under the authority of of the modern state.
So the more they're associated with the state,
the more that erodes their legitimacy and the more that opens up the space for other voices that come and undercut them.
I don't want to argue that there's no place for authority in Islamic law, because that would be a very erroneous reading of Islamic law.
Yes, it's a diverse tradition, but it's a tradition that has also had its ways of vetting and offering respect and wait for authority.
So in a way that concern that we see voiced by many Azeri scholars and perhaps also independent scholars is a legitimate concern.
But it's a concern that is very difficult for them to achieve considering the space that they're trying to carve out.
For example, Ahmed A-type had extent had continued to assert that he cannot.
Offer a position that deems ICIS apostates.
For a very legitimate and sound reason, whether in terms of expedience or in terms of jurisprudence,
because at the very basic level in terms of experience, I cannot criticise them for engaging in fear and then I engage myself.
I'm disarming myself of a of that very important to it.
But he'd come under very heavy criticism from media that is associated with political actors for failing to do that.
So there's always a press, there's always a pressure to pull you back in again.
And in a way that is that is probably part of the legitimacy crisis.
When you see, I mean, as Harry scholars writing on socialism as the way of Islam and then moving away towards writing
towards and how free market is the spirit of Islam and then writings on political and I mean,
on the taboo issues, I mean, political rebellions and so on and so forth.
And the particular line that extensively creates the space for you to lose.
That's I mean that navigating power. Well, thanks.
That's really absolutely fascinating. And you know, I'm sure we could speak about it at length and I'm sure we'll return to this.
I have one question for Murad, and then I will turn to you, Osama, and ask those in our audience to raise their hands or write in their questions.
So, Murad, you know, as you were speaking, I thought, you have in a way two trajectories.
And one, of course, is the one that has to do with colonialism and Orientalism, in which you could arguably put Sokoto in a genealogy ending.
And today's the colonial colonial movement, let's say. And I completely understand that.
But the other one I'm more interested in, which is the figure of Sokoto and perhaps other Islamists as.
Standing for expressing a critique of the post-colonial state itself.
So now, obviously, he puts that within a context in which colonialism or neo colonial colonialism is crucial.
And he was also operating in a Cold War context where the ideological state as some kind of.
Given, let's say or necessity to think about, but if we were to set those factors aside for the moment,
you know what strikes me as being wonderfully original,
not only about him but about other Islamists in this period model, the of course, comes to mind immediately.
Is that they represent. Well, before just as the case, you were making the case with, you know, Orientalism of our letter, you know,
here you have the, you know, if you will, the the move against the post-colonial state before its time almost.
And if we strip it off its its various kind of shootings,
you see that being as being so extraordinarily productive moment because it escapes the usual conventional genealogies in which we set Islamism.
And I wonder if you might have something to say on that particular trajectory of your talk.
Yes, that actually illuminates it in a really generative and helpful way.
So thank you. Yes, I think that I too.
I think I'm much more interested in that second trajectory. The first is sort of a ha kind of a replacement or displacement,
whereas the second really is about shifting the stakes of how we read these thinkers and why we read them.
And you're entirely, I think, right? The G would be another person to read precisely in this fashion.
And the the thing that I find really fascinating about how lot of these articles rather than in the books or that rather than in the later books,
in these articles and in these shorter books that say what I find really fascinating about his analysis is how it really hones in on particular
institutions and in the process of honing in on like this ministry or these cultural centres or this particular way of understanding the Treasury.
There's there's almost a no unmasking, perhaps of the state.
There's almost so I'm thinking here of this brilliant article by Timothy Mitchell and what was it, 1991 or 1990?
The state effect that basically asks us to look at the institutions at the overall configuration of civil society,
rather than to take the state as something that is given or something that is pre-existing.
And that's the discourse that up and all of these other Islamists are operating with from the get go.
There's something really fascinating about how what, what he what he does in, on the one hand,
naming particular institutions rather than the state and on the other hand,
always locating those institutions as sites of the both domestic but also global battles.
That is, help us think about the most nodes or perhaps as vectors within a larger kind of view.
So what I find quite fascinating is how he seems to maybe inadvertently, I don't really know zoom in, zoom out,
zoom in, zoom out and give us these other views that make clear that what is at stake are institutions,
that the state itself is always composed of questions of institutions, of pedagogy,
of relations within the state and of relations between what these institutions enable regionally, locally, globally.
And I think thinking about it as a historical institutionalist is perhaps now that perhaps the way to go really.
Thanks very much. I mean, obviously, the critique of nationalism becomes part of that and critique,
that's neither a liberal critique of the post-colonial state, Cold War, liberal critique nor, of course,
a Marxist critique of the nations of the post-colonial state as a kind of further step in the constitution of a colonial bourgeoisie.
So, yeah, it opens up all kinds of questions. But Oussama, can I turn to you?
I mean, I've just been fascinated by the preceding discussion for both of you.
And I mean, I've had conversations with Helmut after the intro.
You've been sort of part of this vessel as well. I mean, the idea of looking at some like do the as this opportunity to reassess Western
political theory and what you're doing is precisely the same thing as West Virginia,
which is also very interesting.
And that's something I've personally been interested in, but I'm not trained quite so systematically within the western saturations theory literature,
but I think that these people represent an interesting coalescing of ideas.
I mean, when you're talking about Islamism more generally as well,
not just looking at up to a type of international relations theory that needs to be more thickly described, more thoroughly articulated.
And I look forward to reading your work more closely as I also hope to read the original ideas in the in the Arabic or in the case of the North,
in some instances, to be able to explore that in greater detail.
I actually had a question that would take me back to the screen a bit and it sort of perhaps is framed.
You know, you spoke about the way in which Muslim scholars were trying to sort of ameliorate
the impression that the Shariah somehow maybe has certain harmful effects.
And the comparator, of course, is sort of international law as a normative standard against which we measure.
And I think you're doing something similar in, in a sense to what we were just discussing with what you're trying to potentially displace
that authority that is granted to the standard narrative of international law and say,
Well, why does that need to be the sort of reference point?
And for me, what's really striking is some of the story that you said is this was the same time that these scholars are trying to highlight.
Well, you know, Islamic law is as humane as international relations,
the international sort of humanitarian law or whatever is the major reference point.
That is the time when enemy combatants or sort of non-whites get unlawful combatants, they coined.
That idea is being generated.
That is at the same time, you know, I forget the name John Yoo, perhaps is writing the torture memos for the Bush administration.
And I wonder how those two sort of visions of the role of law.
Why are they heading in such divergent pathways?
You know, some of that answer might be somewhat obvious, but I'd love to hear your insights specifically.
Why is it that Muslim scholars are, you know, in this on the back foot trying to say, actually, this tradition isn't as bad as you think?
And these types of the here are trying to say, OK, what can we do this?
This tradition needs to be instrumentalized to allow for the most what in the popular imagination is really heinous behaviour.
So what can we do about that and what motivates those very different trajectories?
And just thinking about your comments on that? Thank you. Thank you, Sam.
That said, that's a very interesting question. I'd like just to direct you to a recent article written by Dina Sollima on that issue,
and she argues that Bush's arguments about the unlawful combatants category can be very much compared to a tired arguments about who may be targeted.
So I mean, I do think I mean, there are some legal nuances that I might agree or disagree with here and there,
but the idea is that we we do not we cannot necessarily read.
The Bush administration is reflective of the international legal tradition as a whole.
At the end of the day, the Bush administration's position was heavily criticised by different you and human rights organisations,
different groups and by the entity that is often seen as the guardian of international humanitarian law, the International Committee of the Red Cross.
So it in a way what was the Bush administration's position might be argued to be an aberration.
I don't think I don't personally think it's an aberration because there is this space in the system that allows for.
Such arguments to be made and the benchmark that is being used here is the benchmark of the the modern modern international humanitarian,
as exemplified by international institutions and international humanitarian organisations.
And sometimes that is a coincidence by an attempt to appeal to that.
I mean, arguably clearly in the very early works,
it's an appeal to the prominence of international law and the idea of the prominence of international law that comes after the Second World War.
So it's an attempt to appeal to that discourse.
But also, there are more deliberate attempts to reconcile the two that we see in the present.
The International Committee of the Red Cross contacts and gets in touch with Muslim
scholars to write articles that portray that that emulate introduction to law.
For example, one scholar that I've mentioned that I've looked at extensively was right.
He has written an article for the international review of the Red Cross on Islamic Laws of War, so that's not a coincidence.
The Red Cross has an Islamic law expert.
Now, I doubt that they have other experts from other legal traditions, and they conduct trainings on Islamic rules of war.
So there is a deliberate agenda, whether one agrees with it or not, to offer to offer that reconciliation.
It's not always just an attempt to appease to an assumption of a superior set of ideals.
There's also a concerted effort that is going to there.
Just a commentary on the Bush administration is, however,
utilised by Muslim scholars to make to make an argument that's very similar to the argument that Salima it makes.
So I remember in an interview, in an interview with the Typekit that I was conducting for my for my fieldwork,
he when asked about the practises of Okada, he explicitly said not every action in the name of a particular legal order is reflective of that order.
Look at how the United States has justified. But if I the invasion of Iraq.
So he didn't choose the unlawful combatants argument,
but he used the use of force arguments and how the US is subverting international law and that this is not indicative of international law.
So it actually creates the space for critique somehow.
But it's the ideals have become so entrenched that when you argue for a different understanding of targeting,
this is not just a different legal interpretation. This takes you into the terrain of barbarism and brutality.
And right, and I think I mean, if I may, I'm just going to link that to a broader question, which I have for yourself,
which was, I mean, the the discursive power that things like the colonial and post-colonial theorists are concerned about.
They're trying to sort of overturn these hegemonic Eurocentric ideals that presuppose the the supremacy or
the normative issue of a particular sort of tradition of thinking and have in some respects underwritten,
you know, the colonial traditions of the last few centuries. Just let me just give you a and all that these sorts of things now.
I mean, in a sense, what you're arguing is that it is a a post-colonial colonial theorist ahead of the post-colonial decline terrorists that we have.
And I mean, which is a fascinating claim to advertise and to say because I'm sure the latter,
the former, neither of them would particularly like that. But but yeah, I mean, I just wanted to sort of.
Ask in what ways does this disrupt the self-image of everyone involved,
whether it's the Islamists or the decolonial theorists of this colonial theorists, so to speak?
Yeah, no, that's I think that that's in a way. Part of what's at stake in that first move.
And the way the Faisal very helpfully said there are sort of two trajectories.
So that's that's I think what the the first trajectory thinking with it, that's that's sort of where it would take us.
And it's there's a way the. I don't know, sort of paint with too grunt of a brush that I've misplaced on my finer brushes.
There's there's a way, the postcolonial theory broadly simultaneously.
Its practitioners, and I guess I would include myself in that to some extent,
its practitioners are certainly not outside of a certain kind of post enlightenment mode of critique.
And yet at the same time that there is there, there are quite a few distancing manoeuvres that are fundamental to how post colonialism,
anti-colonialism, the colonial theory operate with respect to movements that would be considered unsavoury in some way.
And yet the shared discursive space, the shared techniques,
the shared insights and in some ways of the shared implications are something that we can't just sweep under a rug.
So from my perspective, what's precisely interesting about it is it takes this notion of critique and it takes this worship of critique and that says,
maybe we should be critical about this as the ideal that has come to dominate how we have this choreography.
Because at the end of the day, I really do believe that one of the problems of this choreography is that it reproduces the very same kinds of silos,
the very same kinds of geographies, the very same kinds of disciplines that our own disciplines have inherited, oftentimes quite unthinkingly.
And what's interesting about someone like,
I'm guessing he probably wouldn't like being put in the company of various postcolonial and decolonial thinkers.
You probably see them as symptomatic and in many ways.
But I think what's important about reading and recovering his modes of critique is
then the the alternatives the that opens up the alternative modes of thinking.
You mentioned Hamada, the work on duty, and she has this one article in particular in the Journal of Politics.
It came out either last year or the year before. That is absolutely brilliant on this front and really does try to push us to think in those terms.
And maybe one thing that links what I'm trying to do with Perturb and what Nasreen is also doing that is poking the remainder right,
poking these analytics through these categories that or even these choreographies,
the contemporary disciplines and the contemporary state pushes against or pushes to the margins because on the one hand, they're not useful.
Right. And on the other hand, they raised a certain kind of question about the legitimacy of the categories and discourses that define.
What is saleable by who and and what kinds of ways to put it in the most general terms?
But but in that way, it would tell us that at the same time as we're using these categories of postcolonial and decolonial,
we need to be really quite critical of the cultural ized work that already goes into who they give centerstage to and who they silence and why.
That's the case. Thank you very much.
I have, as always, sort of plenty of questions to put to our esteemed panellists, but I don't want to up the discussion either.
I have one for. And then maybe we can go back to you at this time.
So the three, you know, when you were talking about love from the very beginning of your talk, actually, when you mentioned so interestingly, the.
If you will. Cherry picked or perhaps let us even take opportunistic, or at least on systematise mode of addressing some of these questions.
I was put in mind of the sort of idea of this form of theoretical knowledge by one of my early teachers,
Fazlur Rahman, who approached it from a completely modernist.
He was a modernist of modernist viewpoint and sort of railed against it was a wonderful man, by the way.
I don't mean to criticise him, but you know, he railed against the UN systematised and cherry picked,
you know, mode by which jurists had approached the textual corpus.
Not that they were not following up argumentative lines, but they refused.
For instance, in his view, to take the text of the Koran or that systematically.
And of course, he understood that one reason they might have refused to do so was precisely to
allow for the pluralism that you in the street then came back to in your response.
I think Osama and to make it impossible to head summarisation of this textual corpus.
But actually speaking, it struck me. Yes, I completely get that. On the other hand, do you think that?
That form of legal or juridical pluralism, the availability of different kinds of arguments, not entirely congruent with each other.
Sometimes even not with themselves has reached its limits because after all, Al Qaeda and to a large extent ISIS also use similar forms of.
Whatever you want to call it and systematised, or cherry-picked or whatever legal reasoning,
however weak it might be in comparison with that of the sort of aseries.
So, you know, one wonders what a fate lies before this otherwise admirable tradition of legal pluralism.
Thank you. So this is this is something that I keep going back and forth on and extensively reflect, reflect on,
I do think that on the one hand, there's there's an issue with system of taxation, regardless of it being singular or plural.
We don't really see a systemised theory that is advocated by a particular institution or jurist and saying This is the theory that I promote,
I'm trying to espouse and those are the domains of it we see with all the examples that have looked at, we see direct interpretation of the text.
Sometimes we see reliance on jurisprudence sometimes and we see contextual assertions of muscle
and other times with no clarification of when to use what and what you can actually rely on.
This is not a question of intellectual impoverishment.
I do think if one looks at the situation that Al-Azhar is placed in, for example, it's one way to focus on another.
It's not a coincidence. So many scholars have argued that Al-Azhar has managed to carve out a space for itself as the authority on
social issues and the way it carves out that authority is by claiming a connexion with the classical tradition,
by relying on classical jurisprudence when it comes to matters such as Christian status and issues that
or of that are social rather than political taboo issues that they cannot really keep a distance on.
So from that perspective? The connexion with the tradition is the assertion of their of their legitimacy,
the reliance on the jurisprudence is not just an intellectual commitment to the jurisprudence, but it's also part of the reason that.
But when it comes to other political issues where they have less of a freedom to carve out their own space, they have to.
The whole theory starts to falter and and and the position becomes untenable.
But it's.
In a way, it's very difficult for them to imagine or carve out an alternative space considering the role that they play in domestic politics now,
where they are cornered into a way to assert legitimacy by connecting themselves with that tradition.
And I don't want to dispel the importance of the tradition. I mean it, as has been argued by many,
the the claim of direct reliance on the text has also been used as a pretext for justifying
militant thought and for eroding a millennia old tradition of learning in favour of again,
singular interpretations.
So I'm not I'm not sure if there is a way out for them, but they are left in a situation where they're in a dilemma whereby they have.
We have two opposing parties, both using the same ammunition in very similar techniques to to fight against each other,
and there's no winning that game. Thanks. It's really an extraordinary situation, isn't it?
That and people who tend to look at the content rather than the form of these debates.
They don't do a tweak to these strange problems. Osama, thank you.
I mean, I actually did. I'm going to be a bit selfish and try and ask questions to both of you, actually.
But you know, I'm sure we won't really have a great deal of time.
I mean, just picking up on the this point.
I don't mind who who goes first here, but I mean, some of what you were saying was reminiscent of Hulk's earlier claim.
I mean, he doesn't make it in the same way about the death.
The idea that this sort of multiplicity basically being flattened in the modern period reflects a death, the death of the city.
And I think, you know, I've suggested in a review of some of his work that this is maybe a bit overdramatic that we
don't know the way in which the Shariah existed over the past millennium and its variations.
I mean, we're still, I think, trying to grapple with the extent to which there was variation in its in its practise.
It allows for much latitude, including the latitude of modernity.
But I think this flattening of the diversity question,
I wanted you to perhaps reflect a little on what luck is claiming and whether this means somehow,
you know, modern Muslims can't really be adherents to a tradition that is consonant with the past.
Or, you know, as modern Muslims are engaging with these sort of global historical transformations, particularly, I think most importantly,
the states and the fact that the state flattens its legal uniformity, I think, is part and parcel of the way in which we understand states.
Is there any prospect in a sense, do you think that for that to return that sort of diversity given?
So that's kind of bunching two questions, one about one about the state. And very briefly, if it's possible because I know we're going to have to end,
but three minutes actually the Thomas Babington Macaulay minute on education.
I don't know if you're familiar with this 1835 sort of speech he gave in sort of parliament,
but I just I'm reminded of a certain line and it just in 1835, he was saying, we must do.
We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreted as between us and the millions who wake up India,
the class of persons, Indian and blood and colour, but English and tastes and opinions and morals and an intellect.
And you know,
it just made me think that's what came to mind when you mentioned Gottlieb's comments about the sort of white black Englishman with a document.
So anyway, I don't know who wants to take this first, but unfortunately, I have not let you go ahead.
Thanks. And sit in, and I'll be very quick. There's a super interesting genealogy.
I think of that set of tropes with regards to at colonial governance and the like
pretty blatant notion of a divided self that is thoroughly racialized in these terms.
And I shouldn't link it very quickly to another thing that I think is at stake in many of these conversations.
And I think this applies to both presentations today in terms of some of the implications.
And it's that in a lot of the discourses surrounding, you know, think what you want,
whether it's critique or modernity or the Enlightenment or whatever it is,
the production of race, the development of Empire,
the Connexions across different anti-colonial movements that with a couple of rare exceptions, the the Muslim drops out.
Sometimes the Muslim fears that his or her head and then, you know, recedes from view.
And that is symptomatic of something much broader about how we understand many of these categories.
And I think that that's one of the things that the kinds of genealogy that you just pointed to, Osama that help us rethink, help us rewrite.
Help us perhaps even undo.
OK, I'll stop there. And sorry to City and I left you with one or two minutes later.
Now that's perfectly fine.
So I do think that there are compelling aspects to this argument with regards to the dynamics of how Shariah shifted in the modern world.
But I also do agree with the critiques of Hamlet's argument.
That assert that it disregards earlier presence of the political authority in the
making of law and how the political authority has how you had administrative error.
Yes, positions of law, even in the very classical assertions of Islamic law.
I mean, I mean, a case in point is, for example,
if you look at how this chapter on criminal law in his textbook Shariah theory and practise you find in the past section is rather brief and very,
very slim. I mean, despite the fact that most of the time, most of the punishments were actually worth Assiri punishments.
So I mean, so on that account, I do find there are some issues there.
And I do have issues with the claims that Shariah is one model and and it has
to fit that particular model and it cannot be reformulated or reinterpreted.
But that doesn't necessarily mean that the. So the question is not whether or not it can be reformulated differently.
The question is whether or not I mean, in that particular context,
there is a space in the current political context to offer alternative formulations that may very well be very different from earlier interpretations.
It varies over time. But in the current context, there's a very slim chance for that.
Thank you so much. Thank you, both.
This has really been sort of a fantastic sort of kaleidoscope of thinking about a topic which is not seen with favour,
of course, violence, so to speak, and for good reason in general.
But I cannot thank you both enough for really giving us a wonderful sort of insight into some
of these sort of cutting edge work that you are both involved in the theoretical reflections,
the granular legal detail which you brought in as well. And I'm I can sort of only wish that we had much more time to be able to discuss these things,
and I'm sure we will have plenty of options to reconnect.
So if it's all right, I'm just going to briefly mention what's coming up next in our next session in a fortnight's time.
So thank you both to industry and by the way, and at risk for really spectacular, interesting and engaging session in a couple more weeks time.
We'll also be having a couple of scholars coming in, including in Selma, who's now based at Oxford and for the next couple of years.
And Mohammed Fadel, who have both been naturally going to be talking about law.
So I look forward to sort of guests joining us then and if you have the time to join as well.
But until then, we look forward to seeing everyone in a couple of weeks time.