L – Hybrid Learning

LOYA JIRGA

Batoota — Mon, 28 Jul 2014 12:48:22 +0000

LOYA JIRGA. Councils summoned by Afghan rulers over the past century to consolidate their authority and nationalist programs have been called by this term,
which means “grand assembly” in Pashtu. Modernist Afghans and historians have attempted to trace loya jirga into the distant past and indigenous tribal custom, but loya jirga differ from tribal jirga in fundamental ways. Tribal jirga are a Pashtun custom of communal assembly for deciding on collective undertakings or settling internal conflicts. Decisions are reached by a consensus of those attending. Loya jirga are bodies of delegates summoned by the ruler and limited to his initiatives; they include religious leaders, who have only ratifying roles in tribal jirga. A more proximate model would be the majlis, for loya jirga belong to the history and centralization of government in modern Afghanistan.

LOYA JIRGA

The format was set by Amir `Abd al-Rahman Khan (188o-1901), who initiated several consultative bodies to check the quasifeudal jagir system of titleholders adopted by previous amirs and to assert power over officeholders and local leaders. His arrangement of loya jirga as “national” assemblies alongside assemblies of titleholders (darbari shahi) and of local leaders (khawdnin mulki) was formalized in the first constitution of Afghanistan proclaimed by Amir Amanullah (1919-1929) in 1923.
Boundaries of the nation and the ruler’s authority have been the constants of loya jirga. `Abd al-Rahman held three, according to Hasan Kakar, to affirm his negotiations of Afghanistan’s modern borders and his paramount authority within them. Amanullah summoned a loya jirga in 1921 to ratify his treaty with Britain recognizing Afghanistan’s independence, again in 1924 after a rebellion against his efforts to modernize Afghanistan, and in 1928 to press reforms; the last provoked a civil war. After its conclusion, Nadir Shah (1930-1933) called a loya jirga in 1930 to affirm his proclamation as ruler by a jirga of tribal militia; another was summoned in 1941 to accept British demands (to expel Axis nationals) that infringed Afghan sovereignty. Loya jirga were convened again in 1949 and 1955 to press nationalist claims to tribal territories in Pakistan; these were reaffirmed by a loya jirga summoned in 1964 to ratify a new constitution.
The last provides a picture of loya jirga at work. Of more than 45o delegates, 176 were elected for the event, to offset 176 who were members of the National Assembly, with the balance drawn from appointed legislators, officials, and the committees that had drafted the constitution. Although the delegates were not “king’s men,” it was the ruler’s assembly; it was composed to check entrenched interests and to establish the authority of the center.
Whatever loya jirgas employ of regional traditions and techniques, their specific features belong to the history of modern Afghan government, not to tribal models. Loya jirga have never assembled to settle conflicts or to decide a course of collective action, but only on a ruler’s initiative, and then more for communication than for consultation between the ruler and constitutent communities. Apparently formulated by Amir Abd al-Rahman as a check on title-holders and local leaders, the loya jirga has been a device for nationalizing the boundaries of the country and authority within it.
[See also Afghanistan; Majlis.]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Gregorian, Vartan. The Emergence of Modern Afghanistan. Stanford, Calif., 1969. The most comprehensive and balanced political history of Afghanistan.
Kakar, M. Hasan. Government and Society in Afghanistan. Austin, 1979. Provides a detailed study of Emir `Abd al-Rahman’s government.
Poullada, Leon B. Reform and Rebellion in Afghanistan, 1919-1929. Ithaca, N.Y., 1973. Places the Amanullah period in a tribal context.
Dupree, Louis. Afghanistan. Princeton, 1978. Contains a lively account of the 1964 loya jirga.
JON W. ANDERSON

LIBYA

Batoota — Mon, 28 Jul 2014 12:12:22 +0000

LIBYA. Islam in nineteenth-century Libya-known at the time as the regions of Cyrenaica, Tripolitania, and Fazzan-was marked by Sunni orthodoxy in its urban areas (primarily Tripoli, Benghazi and the mercantile centers of Sabha and Murzuq in Fazzan) and by a number of heterodox and more populist interpretations in the rural hinterlands and among the nomadic tribes of the desert areas. The latter reinterpreted and adapted the austerity of Sunni Islam to the Islamic practices of the regions’ tribal communities. Small pockets of Ibadl Muslims dotted the Tripolitanian landscape.

The second Ottoman occupation of 1835, meant primarily to forestall European colonial designs after the French invasion of neighboring Algeria in 1830, resulted in the first manifestations of both antiOttomanism and anti-Western sentiments expressed in overtly Islamic terms. This identification of a popular expression of Islam with political opposition would become a defining characteristic of politics in Libya-a characteristic that not only marked the anticolonialist struggle and the Sanusi monarchy after independence but has also played a significant role in Mu’ammar Qadhdhafi’s Jamahirlyah, a political system run directly by the people.
Sanusiyah. In part to escape foreign encroachments and defend Islam against them, and simultaneously to revitalize and purify the religion, Sayyid Muhammad ibn `All al-Sanusi, an Algerian religious scholar who had traveled to Mecca, founded the Sanusiyah order. Isolated Cyrenaica-outside European influence and only nominally under Ottoman suzerainty-provided the ideal locale for a religious movement that relied in part on the doctrine of hijrah (“withdrawal” in emulation of the prophet Muhammad’s flight from Mecca to Medina) to settle among the tribes of the territory’s hinterlands.
For almost nine decades the Sanusiyah represented a powerful Islamic revivalist movement that combined both economic and religious elements as it spread across Cyrenaica, Fazzan, and parts of rural Tripolitania. Its economic importance, pointed out by Emrys Peters, resulted from the order’s manipulation of tribal power over the trading routes that ran from the Sahara via Cyrenaica to the Egyptian coast. Peters (1990) delineates a system of alliance patterns among local tribal leaders and shaykhs that allowed the order to dominate both local and long-distance trade. The order’s religious relevance to the local tribes was expressed through its incorporation of the shurafd’ (descendents of the prophet Muhammad who acquire thereby some of his qualities) and of murabitun (locally acclaimed pious individuals endowed with saintly qualities).
By the end of the century the Sanusiyah, centered first in Jaghbub and then retreating to the even more isolated desert oasis of Kufrah in 1895, became the dominant religious and political power in Cyrenaica. As part of its mission it imposed a previously unknown degree of Sunni orthodoxy among its rural adherents and paved the way for the further spread of Sunni practice into Waddai and Tibesti, areas now incorporated in modern Chad. The declining Ottoman Empire unofficially agreed to what Evans-Pritchard (1949) describes as a “Turco-Sanusi Condominium.” With its property officially recognized by the Ottomans as waqf, the order came to symbolize orthodox Islam wherever its zawdyd (lodges) were found.
By the early part of the twentieth century, only some of the `ulama’ in the urban centers could challenge the hegemony the Sanusiyah had established. Not surprisingly, the order led the local resistance, particularly in Cyrenaica, to the Italian invasion after the Ottoman Empire abandoned that effort in 1912. Although the Sanusi leadership eventually fled to Egypt, it left behind a number of individual shaykhs, such as `Umar alMukhtar, who would continue the struggle against Italy until 1927.
Owing in part to the Sanusi alliance with the British in World War II, and in part to the great powers’ determination that Libya should not fall once more under Italian tutelage, the Kingdom of Libya was proclaimed in 1951 with King Idris al-Sanusi, the grandson of the order’s founder, as its head. More concerned with matters of religious importance-such as the creation of an Islamic university in Al-Bayda’-and with personal piety, Idris proved unable effectively to face both the demands of a younger generation imbued with a growing sense of nationalism, and those of an oil economy that grew at a phenomenal pace after the first marketing of oil in 1961. By the eve of the Qadhdhafi coup in 1969 the monarchy had become a political anachronism, but, significantly, the confluence of religion and a growing political opposition (to the West) would remain a significant feature of the military regime that succeeded it.
Qadhdhafi’s Revolution and Islam. Colonel Mu’ammar al-Qadhdhafi’s “revolution” was originally considered as one of the earliest examples of the political renewal of Islam since the North African countries obtained their independence in the 1950s and 1960s. The Libyan leader had not been trained in Islamic jurisprudence and had only a cursory knowledge of Islamic theology. His knowledge and interpretations of Islam reflected primarily the recent history of both his country and the Sanusi kingdom.
The earliest pronouncements of the regime included a number of nationalist as well as Islamic references, and the substantive measures initially taken by the regime in its early days-among them the revival of Qur’anic criminal penalties and the banning of alcohol and nightclubs-indicated an open admittance of Islam as a guiding force in the country’s political life. But, although Islam would clearly be part of the revolution’s ideology, it was mentioned only briefly in article 2 of the country’s new constitution of ii December 1969, and then simply as “the religion of the state.” Despite the fact that Qadhdhafi himself often referred to the importance of Islam to his revolution, the unveiling of his political program during the Libyan Intellectual Seminar in May 1970 made only perfunctory references to Islam–except in the context of Qur’anic education, which the government initially left untouched.
Both events, however, hinted at the fact that if Qadhdhafi and his revolutionary officers were to be considered Islamic reformers, this reformism-as events later confirmed-consisted of a highly idiosyncratic interpretation and a highly politicized version of Islam. The experience of Islam in Libya since 1969 can thus be characterized both as a conscious choice to promote political mobilization and as the embodiment of moral commitments by the revolution’s leadership. The regime firmly believed that its search for legitimacy could only be achieved within Libya’s conservative society if it could demonstrate its adherence to Islamic principles.
Simultaneously, however, this search for legitimacy would also entail the evisceration of all potential competitors, in particular the rural religious elites formerly affiliated with the Sanusi lodges and the orthodox `ulama’ in the urban centers. The imposition of a new bureaucratic structure after 1970-only partly successful-was meant to secure the first objective. The latter, although already foreshadowed by expressions of distrust made by the regime vis-a-vis the `ulama’ during the 1970 Intellectual Seminar, would take until early 1975, when they were removed from committees set up to reform the country’s legal system. By that time Qadhdhafi had already taken a number of measures that put his experiments at odds with Sunni Islamic practice elsewhere.
Qadhdhafi’s initiatives involved a series of legal reforms, dating back to a decree issued shortly after the 1969 revolution, that called for the implementation of shari’ah law; this was extended by the islamization of Libyan law in October 1971. The new regulations, derived from Maliki legal practice, called for the maintenance of existing laws if they agreed with shad `ah principles, and for the use of customary law (`urf) when applicable. In essence, the regime devised a two-track approach by arguing that matters of religious doctrine were inviolable but that “secular” issues could be subjected to ijtihdd (innovative reasoning). Similarly, Qadhdhafi was less willing to accept hadith, sunnah, ijma` and qiyds, pronouncing them unnecessary accretions to Islam. In particular, he maintained that only part of the sunnah could be considered a constitutive element of shari’ah and argued furthermore that ijtihad was an acceptable means of broadening its scope in the modern world. In a celebrated discussion with the country’s `ulama’ at the Mawlay Muhammad Mosque in Tripoli in July 1978 (reprinted in Barrada et al., 1984) Qadhdhafi reiterated most of these points.
Islam, Qadhdhafi argued, should not simply reassert traditional values but should become a progressive force. As such, the Libyan leader clearly saw the revival of shari’ah in particular as a means for both ideological renewal and greater political legitimacy. It was this populist reinterpretation of Islamic law, devoid of input from specialized jurists, that assumed increasing importance throughout the 1970s and 1980s and that made every individual-in line with the regime’s populist aspirationsa potential mujtahid, an individual capable of interpreting and innovating Islamic doctrine and law. These legal reforms in effect afforded the Libyan regime the opportunity carefully to control independent religious organizations. By taking control of waqf property through special legislation enacted in 1972 and 1973, the regime further reduced the already diminished impact of the urban `ulama’ The `ulama’ now bereft of the financial basis of the religious establishment, for all practical purposes became state employees and lost whatever cultural, financial, and political autonomy they had once possessed. The Libyan state assumed the role of patron of the religious establishment, heavily subsidizing religious life and observance after 1970, including financial support for pilgrims performing the hajj and the construction of a significant number of new mosques.
Qadhdhafi started to conceptualize his ideas that would eventually result in the Green Book and its Third Universal Theory of political action based on Islam that would replace both capitalism and communism. At the April 1973 Zuwarah speech that ushered in his cultural revolution, Qadhdhafi revealed the principles on which the country’s political system would be based: Arab unity, direct popular democracy, and Islamic socialism. According to the Libyan leader, the new theory would solve once and for all the tension, inherent in a secular concept of the state, between din and dawlah: Islam would serve as the source of inspiration for political renewal and innovation, and as a means of legitimizing the regime’s political institutions. Qadhdhafi’s vision of egalitarian individualism-visible now in the country’s political institutions, which were run directly by the people represented in People’s Congresses and in Islam through the application of individual ijtihad-was repeated in the Green Book, which was implicitly based on Islamic doctrine.
The creation of the Jamahiriyah in 1977 was the culmination of this egalitarian process and ushered in a new stage of Qadhdhafi’s interpretation of Islam. The economic aspects of his Green Book-which included the abolishing of private property-were judged by the `ulama’ as contradictory to Islam; they objected that Qadhdhafi seemed determined to use the Green Book’s principles as an alternative to the traditional teachings of shad `ah law. In response, Qadhdhafi further elaborated his interpretations of Islam, declaring, for example, in 1977 that the Libyan calendar now started with the death of the prophet Muhammad in 632 rather than with the customary date of the Hijrah in 622. He finally mounted an all-out offensive against the power of the `ulama’ in early 1978, arguing that since the Qur’an was written in Arabic, there was no need for expert interpretation. The Qur’an was declared the sole source of shari`ah law, and the sunnah, as well as qiyas, ijma`, and hadith were now rejected as errors. The mosques were put under popular control; the status of women in divorce cases was declared equal to that of men; and the hajj to Mecca was no longer considered a pillar of Islam.
As on all other occasions, Qadhdhafi’s innovations served political as well as religious purposes: they afforded the regime greater legitimacy for whatever actions it took in secular matters and simultaneously freed it from the constraints of Islamic doctrine and tradition, which, Qadhdhafi argued, were outdated and open to individual interpretation. Although the reaction of the `ulama’ within Libya remained necessarily muted, Qadhdhafl’s actions in time would be labeled by the country’s underground Islamist movements as bid`ah (heretical innovation). By the mid-1980s these movements’ followers-among others, the Hizb al-Tahrir al-Islami and the local version of the Ikhwan al-Muslimin-were increasingly targeted, and several were publicly executed by the regime. By the early 1990s they had been singled out as potentially the most dangerous opposition and were denounced in vitriolic terms by Qadhdhafi, who declared them public enemies of the revolution.
Conclusion. Islam in Libya in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries has shown the lingering impact of the country’s historical legacy. During the colonial period in particular, the two groups of competing religious establishments-the Sanuisi-allied shaykhs and the urban-based, orthodox `ulama’-cooperated with the British and the Italians respectively, and as a result undermined confidence among young Libyans who grew up during the Arab nationalist period that these established powers could serve as trustworthy political interlocutors.
Qadhdhafi’s pronouncements on Islam since 1969 have clearly referred to this earlier historical period; in particular, the pro-Western attitude and weak nationalist credentials of the Sanusi monarchy indelibly impressed the Libyan leader as he grew up in the country’s hinterland. This endowed him with a clear suspicion of any type of organized religious group in the country, and led eventually to their evisceration. It also resulted in his strong conviction, maintained consistently throughout his tenure in office, that religious affairs were both within the purview of government and subject to personal interpretation.
Soon after the 1969 coup Qadhdhafi adopted a highly activist political stance in which he proclaimed himself a mediator between different interpretations of Islamic precepts. His insistence on the right of personal interpretation necessitated a number of doctrinal interpretations that pitted him both against his country’s `ulama’ and against much of the orthodox Sunni religious establishment throughout the Arab world. In the end, it resulted in a political process where he simply imposed his own views on Libyan religious leaders and the country’s population alike. The Islamic precepts that Qadhdhafi had originally advocated as valuable in and of themselves assumed an evocative symbolism within Libya, anchored within the teachings of the Third Universal theory, that would allow them to become one of the regime’s array of political instruments.
Despite this, Islam in the Jamahiriyah today is not an attempt to foster religious revivalism by radical means. Qadhdhafi has sought simply to extend a long tradition of government that is based on and legitimated by religious precepts. If his attitude toward Islam is considered radical, it is primarily so because his overall political, secular ambitions are radical as well. The regime rejects Islamic tradition, relying instead on a popular reinterpretation of Islam steeped in the egalitarian tradition in which Qadhdhafi himself had grown up.
[See also Sanusiyah; and the biographies of Mukhtdr and Qadhdhafi. ]
Sanusiyah
El-Horair, A. S. “Social and Economic Transformations in the Libyan Hinterland during the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century: The Role of Sayyid Ahmad al-Sharif al-Sanussi.” Ph.D. diss., University of California-Berkeley, 1981. The only comprehensive study of Ahmad al-Sharif al-Sanusi, who became one of Libya’s national heroes for his stance against the colonial power.
Evans-Pritchard, E. E. The Sanusi of Cyrenaica. Oxford, 1949. Classic study of the Sanusiyah.
Martel, Andre. La Libye, 1835-1990: Essai de giopolitique historique. Paris, 1991. Excellent essay on Libyan history, with some attention to the Islamic dimension of the country’s background.
Peters, Emrys L. The Bedouin of Cyrenaica: Studies in Personal and Corporate Power. Cambridge, 1990. A much needed update and reinterpretation of Evans-Pritchard’s earlier work, from an anthropological perspective.
Qadhdhifi’s Islam
Ayoub, Mahmoud M. Islam and the Third Universal Theory: The Religious Thought of Mu’ammar al-Qadhdhdft. London, 1987. Arguably the best explanation of Qadhdhafi’s thought and ideology, contained within a hagiography of the Libyan leader.
Barrada, Hamid, et al. “Kadhafi: ” Je suis un opposant d i’echelon mondial.” Lausanne, 1984. Contains several thoughtful interviews with the Libyan leader, as well as a number of important statements and debates engaged in by Qadhdhafi.
Burgat, Franqois, and William Dowell. The Islamic Movement in North Africa. Austin, 1993 Substantial treatment of North African, including Libyan, Islamist movements.
Mason, John Paul. Island of the Blest: Islam in a Libyan Oasis Community. Athens, Ohio, 1977. Excellent study of the effect of Qadhdhafi’s revolution and his interpretation of Islam on one Libyan oasis.
Mayer, Ann Elizabeth. Islamic Law in Libya: Analyses of Selected Laws Enacted since the 1969 Revolution. London, 1977. The best available interpretation of some of Qadhdhafi’s edicts and statements on Islam and Libya’s legal system.
Qadhdhafi, Mu’ammar al-. The Green Book. 3 vols. Tripoli, 198o. The Libyan leader’s thoughts bundled into three slim volumes.
2011 Revolution
After the Arab Spring movements overturned the rulers of Tunisia and Egypt, Libya experienced a full-scale revolt beginning on 17 February 2011. By 20 February, the unrest had spread to Tripoli. On 27 February 2011, the National Transitional Council was established to administer the areas of Libya under rebel control. On 10 March 2011, France became the first state to officially recognise the council as the legitimate representative of the Libyan people.
Pro-Gaddafi forces were able to respond militarily to rebel pushes in Western Libya and launched a counterattack along the coast toward Benghazi, the de facto centre of the uprising. The town of Zawiya, 48 kilometres (30 mi) from Tripoli, was bombarded by air force planes and army tanks and seized by Jamahiriya troops, “exercising a level of brutality not yet seen in the conflict.”
Organs of the United Nations, including United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and the United Nations Human Rights Council, condemned the crackdown as violating international law, with the latter body expelling Libya outright in an unprecedented action urged by Libya’s own delegation to the UN.
On 17 March 2011 the UN Security Council passed Resolution 1973 with a 10–0 vote and five abstentions including Russia and China. The resolution sanctioned the establishment of a no-fly zone and the use of “all means necessary” to protect civilians within Libya. On 19 March, the first act of NATO allies to secure the no-fly zone by destroying Libyan air defences began when French military jets entered Libyan airspace on a reconnaissance mission heralding attacks on enemy targets.In the weeks that followed, American forces were in the forefront of NATO operations against Libya. More than 8,000 American personnel in warships and aircraft were deployed in the area. At least 3,000 targets were struck in 14,202 strike sorties, 716 of them in Tripoli and 492 in Brega. The American air offensive included flights of B-2 Stealth bombers, each bomber armed with sixteen 2000-pound bombs, flying out of and returning to their base in Missouri on the continental United States. Clearly the support provided by the NATO air forces was pivotal in the ultimate success of the revolution.
By 22 August 2011, rebel fighters had entered Tripoli and occupied Green Square, which they renamed Martyrs’ Square in honour of those killed since 17 February 2011. On 20 October 2011 the last heavy fighting of the uprising came to an end in the city of Sirte, where Gadhafi was captured and killed. The defeat of loyalist forces was celebrated on 23 October 2011, three days after the fall of Sirte.
At least 30,000 Libyans died in the civil war.

LIBRARIES

Batoota — Mon, 28 Jul 2014 11:47:18 +0000

LIBRARIES. Like Islamic civilization in general, Islamic libraries have a glorious past to which present-day Muslims are struggling to measure up. The Muslims’ love of learning naturally produced a culture of literacy and the preservation of books. The vastness of modern literature has brought different challenges as Muslim librarians seek adequate ways to manage it bibliographically.

The Qur’an first spread the written word widely in the previously oral literary culture of the Arabs. As Muslims made pious donations of Qur’an manuscripts to mosques, the practice of storing written materials developed. Literacy increased because of the religious necessity of reading the Qur’an, and professional scribes flourished. The Qur’an, with its command “Read!,” provided the groundwork for the production of learning and literature, leading to the growth of organized, wellmanaged book collections-libraries.
The first library collections appeared in the Umayyad era. Few books from that time survive, but there are accounts of literary activity and book collecting. The Umayyad prince Khalid ibn Yazid (d. 704) was a man of letters and a noted book collector. The earliest collections belonged to mosque libraries and private libraries; later came caliphal, academic, and public libraries. Mosques were often the chief suppliers of public library services.
The second `Abbasid caliph al-Mansur (r. 754-775) established a translation bureau at Baghdad, which led to a seminal achievement of classical Islamic librarianship, the Bayt al-Hikmah, founded in 83o by the caliph al-Ma’mun (r. 813-833). In addition to being the leading library of its time, it continued the translation of texts from other civilizations and included an academy for scholars; thus it was a central clearinghouse for the learning of the Islamic world. Other rulers in that era founded similar centers, such as the Fatimid Dar al-`Ilm of al-Hakim at Cairo, and the great library of the Spanish Umayyads at Cordoba, which held some 400,000 volumes. The rise of the madrasah universities brought with it the important development of academic libraries.
The large-scale production of books and their acquisition by libraries in great numbers became possible only after paper replaced the more expensive parchment and vellum. The manufacture of paper was introduced to the Islamic world from China at Samarkand in the mideighth century. From there the technique spread west to Damascus, Cairo, and Spain. Once paper became widely available, the production and distribution of books had its nexus in the profession of the warraq, a paper dealer, copyist, and bookseller, and frequently a scholar and author in his own right.
The famous warraq Ibn al-Nadim produced in 987 a monumental, landmark bibliography entitled Al fihrist, a description of every book he had handled, seen, or otherwise learned of. It remains an invaluable source for the history of the literary culture of that era. A later bibliographic milestone was the work of Katib celebi (sometimes known as Hajji Khalifah) of Istanbul (1609-1657). Having visited all the great libraries of Istanbul, he wrote the Kashf al-zunun, an annotated bibliography of some 14,500 titles in alphabetical order; it also included a general survey of the arts and sciences.
Over time, the great library collections became dispersed, either from lack of care or by incorporation of their books into other collections. Books were always subject to destruction by the usual natural hazardsfire, flood, decay, and so on. There was also deliberate, massive destruction of books by the Mongols at Baghdad and by Spanish Inquisitors after the Reconquista. The age of European colonialism saw the removal of many thousands of manuscripts from the Islamic world to the libraries and private collections of the West, most notably those of the British Library, France’s Bibliotheque Nationale, and Princeton University.
Some notable manuscript collections in the Islamic world today include those of Topkapi Sarayl and Suley-maniye Kutuphanesi in Istanbul, the library of Ayatollah Mar’ashi in Qom, and the Khuda Bakhsh Oriental Public Library in Patna, India. Such collections are an important link between the glorious past and the troubled present.
The printing of books came late to the Islamic world, and the traditional custodianship and cataloging of manuscripts bear scant relationship to the practices of modern librarianship and bibliographic control (systems permitting users to identify, locate, and get access to desired publications). Bibliographic control involves cataloging, classification, and indexing, as well as the production of bibliographies and accession lists. All such activities are called “documentation” in countries outside the United States.
Islamic librarianship has been in a generally sorry state during the twentieth century. The publication of books and other items in the Islamic world is flourishing, but the ability of Muslim librarians to handle the material adequately has been deficient-although not for lack of sincere, conscientious thought and discussion among concerned librarians.
In the colonial period, modern libraries in Muslim countries were set up and run by Europeans; in the early postcolonial period as well, professional British librarians dominated librarianship in the former British colonies. By now, however, library education has progressed enough in Muslim countries to enable Muslim librarians to assume leadership. Pakistan and Egypt are especially noted for their library education, and those two countries are major exporters of professionally trained librarians, especially to the Gulf region.
Issues that the Anglo-American world long ago settled, such as cataloging, classification, national libraries, and public library legislation, still pose some serious challenges for Muslims. An Islam-centered approach to classification and subject headings remains a dream that seems far from practical realization. The Dewey Decimal Classification (unsuitable as it is) has been widely used by Muslim countries, often with local tinkering, but the Library of Congress Classification with its attendant subject headings is now gaining in popularity. Muslims continue to propose Islamic classification schemes, but none has proved suitable for general use.
Most Muslim countries have managed to establish some form of national library, and some, particularly Egypt and Tunisia, are making serious attempts at national bibliographies. Unfortunately, public libraries seem to be a low priority throughout most of the Islamic world, and they are altogether too scarce in many countries. Often it is the national library, by default, that provides public library service. Turkey, Jordan, Pakistan, and Malaysia deserve mention for their establishment of public libraries; in Lahore and Kuala Lumpur there are even public libraries especially for children. The site of the Prophet’s birthplace in Mecca is now a public library. The quality of academic libraries is varied, but in general they are showing slow, steady improvement.
The most important issues for librarians today-automation, freedom of access to information, and above all, library cooperation and networking-are especially challenging in the Islamic world. Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states have led the way in regional cooperation. Their GULFNET online database is the model for other Muslim countries. Malaysian libraries have also been automating and forming themselves into a network.
International cooperation, coordination of activities, and networking throughout the entire Islamic world constitute the biggest challenge, one that still seems far from solution, although it has seen plenty of discussion. The Congress of Muslim Librarians and Information Scientists (COMLIS), previously headquartered in Malaysia, was formed to address this issue. It has met three times but has been inactive much of the time. The Organization of the Islamic Conference has established the Research Center for Islamic History, Art and Culture (IRCICA) in Yildiz Sarayi at Besiktas, Istanbul; it has been doing some important work in international Islamic bibliography. There is still no international scholarly journal devoted to Islamic library science, though one is badly needed.
In Alexandria, Egypt, work is under way on the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, scheduled to open in 1998 and inspired by the memory of the great ancient library there (no one who wants to be taken seriously can any longer blame the Muslims for its destruction, because it was gone long before the Muslims arrived). Although there seems to be nothing specifically Islamic about it, it is intended to be one of the world’s biggest repository libraries, with all the latest information technology; one may therefore hope that Islamic librarianship will benefit from it.
meet these challenges, the knowledge exists, the technology is readily available, and the funding could be found. What bedevils Muslim librarians is a lack of organization and cooperation, and of initiative toward these goals. It is as if the political disunity of the Islamic world is reflected in its uncoordinated librarianship. There is progress, but it is slow.
[See also Book Publishing; Periodical Literature; Reference Books.]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Aman, Muhammad M., and Sha’ban Khalifah. “Library and Information Services in the Arab Countries.” In Librarianship in the Muslim World 1984, edited by Anis Khurshid and Malahat K. Sherwani, vol. 2, pp. 3-45. Karachi, 1985.
Anees, Munawar A. “Information Technology and Global Control System for Islamic Literature.” Pakistan Library Bulletin 20 (June 1989): 21-36.
Anwar, Mumtaz Ali. “Towards a Universal Bibliographic System for Islamic Literature.” International Library Review 15.3 (1983): 257261.
COMLIS III: The Third Congress of Muslim Librarians and Information Scientists. Istanbul, 1989. Papers from the conference held at Istanbul in May 1989.
Hamadah, Muhammad Mahir. Al-maktabat ft al-Islam: Nash’atuhawa-Tatawwuruha wa-Masd’iruhd (Libraries in Islam: Their Origin, Development, and Destiny). Beirut, 1970. Includes history as well as philosophy of librarianship.
Ibn al-Nadim, Muhammad ibn Ishaq. The Fihrist of al-Nadim: A Tenth Century Survey of Muslim Culture. Edited and translated by Bayard Dodge. 2 vols. New York, 1970.
`Ishsh, Yusuf al-Les bibliotheques arabes publiques et semi publiques en Mesopotamie, en Syrie et en Egypte au Moyen Age (Arabic public and semipublic libraries in Mesopotamia, Syria, and Egypt in the Middle Ages. Damascus, 1967. Translated into Arabic by Nizar Abazah and Muhammad Sabbagh as Dur al-kutub al-`Arabiyah al-`ammah wa-shibh al-`ammah li-bildd al-`Iraq wa-al-Sham wa-Misr ft al-`Asr al-Wasit (Beirut and Damascus, 1991). Probably the best history of classical Islamic libraries. Unfortunately, there is no English translation.
Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (ISESCO). Bibliotheques et Centres de Documentation =Libraries and Documentation Centers. Rabat, Morocco, 1988. A directory of modern institutions. Incomplete but useful.
Katib celebi. Kitab Kashf al-zunun `an asdmi al-kutub wa-al funun. Edited by Mehmet serefeddin Yaltkaya. 2 vols. Istanbul, 19411943.
Mutahhari, Murtaza. The Burning of Libraries in Iran and Alexandria. Translated by N. P. Nazareno and M. Nekodast. Tehran, 1983. A conclusive refutation of the myth of Muslims’ culpability.
Newson, Jo, and Larry Luxner. “Rebuilding an Ancient Glory.” Aramco World 45.2 (March-April 1994): 24-29. On the new Bibliotheca Alexandrina.
Pearson, J. D. “Maktaba.” In Encyclopaedia of Islam, new ed., vol. 6, pp. 197-200. Leiden, 1960-.
Roman, Stephen. The Development of Islamic Library Collections in Western Europe and North America. London and New York, 1990. An interestingly written and detailed account of how so many Islamic manuscripts were removed from Muslim countries.
Sajjad ur-Rahman. “Information Resource Sharing and Network Projects.” In Building Information Systems in the Islamic World (Papers presented at the Second Congress of Muslim Librarians and Information Scientists, held in Kedah, Malaysia, 20-22 October 1986), pp. 125-141. London and New York, 1988.
Sibai, Mohamed Makki. Mosque Libraries: An Historical Study. London and New York, 1987.
Siddiqi, Rashid. “The Intellectual Challenge of Islamizing Librarianship.” The American journal of Islamic Social Sciences 5.2 (December 1988): 275-278.
Sliney, Marjory. “Arabia Deserta: The Development of Libraries in the Middle East.” Library Association Record 92 (December 1990): 912-914.
YAHYA MONASTRA

LIBERATION MOVEMENT OF IRAN

Batoota — Mon, 28 Jul 2014 11:35:27 +0000

LIBERATION MOVEMENT OF IRAN. A political party whose program is based on a modernist interpretation of Islam, the Liberation Movement of Iran (LMI) was founded in May 1961 by leaders of the former National Resistance Movement (NRM). A few days after the ouster of Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh (Muhammad Musaddiq) in August 1953, with his close collaborators either under arrest or surveillance, some of Mossadegh’s less politically prominent followers founded the NRM as a secret organization to uphold the nationalist cause under the repressive conditions of the new dictatorship. Among its leaders were the cleric Sayyid Riza Zanjani, Mehdi Bazargan, the lawyer Hasan Nazih, and Muhammad Rahim `Ata’i. The NRM had two social bases: the bazaar and students. Key NRM. leaders came from a bazaar background, which facilitated contacts with Mossadeghist merchants who financed the movement; students, for their part, demonstrated. Based in Tehran, the NRM was also present in a few provincial centers, most notably Mashhad, where ‘Ali Shari ati was active.

The NRM organized protest demonstrations against the regime on the occasions of Mossadegh’s trial (fall 1953) Vice President Richard Nixon’s visit to Iran (December 1953), sham parliamentary elections (winter 1954) and the new oil agreement that resolved Iran’s dispute with Great Britain (spring 1954). Internal disagreements-between secular and Islamist activists, between opponents and proponents of collaboration with the communists-weakened the movement, and after 1954 the increasing efficiency of the shah’s security apparatus caused NRM activity to decline, until the organization was crushed in 1957 when all top activists were arrested and held prisoner for eight months.
When in 1960 Mossadeghists became active again in the course of the shah’s liberalization policies, carried out in response to President John F. Kennedy’s election, conflict arose between erstwhile NRM. Leaders and the National Front’s old guard of former cabinet members. Two issues were at stake. First, NRM veterans and their young sympathizers in the National Front wanted to target the shah personally, whereas the more moderate National Front leaders tried to spare him, hoping that he would become a constitutional monarch. Second, the core members of the former NRM, most of whom were also active in Islamic circles, wanted to mobilize Iranians by appealing to their religious values, a policy the National Front’s secular leadership rejected. The dispute came to a head in May 1961 when Mehdi Bazargan, Sayyid Mahmud Taleqani, Hasan Nazih, Yad Allah Sahabi, and eight other men formed a separate party, the LMI. The party was defined as Muslim, Iranian, constitutionalist, and Mossadeghist.
During the nineteen months of its activity, the LMI opposed the shah’s regime and its policies, calling on the ruler to respect the constitution. When the shah named the independent politician ‘Ali Amini prime minister, the LMI tried to accommodate him so as to weaken the shah, unlike the National Front, which considered Amini too pro-American. Amini’s resignation in July 1962 heralded the end of liberalization in Iran. In January 1963 the shah had the entire leadership of the LMI and the National Front arrested, after both had sharply criticized his planned referendum on what would become the “White Revolution.” Although the secular politicians were soon released, the LMI leaders were sentenced to several years imprisonment.
After the violent repression of the June 1963 riots, which propelled Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini into the political limelight and in which certain lower level LMI activists participated, the shah’s rule became increasingly autocratic. This made any oppositional party activity in Iran impossible. Several young LMI militants concluded that the legal constitutional methods of their elders having failed, armed struggle was now called for: they formed the Mujahidin-i Khalq [see Mujahidin, article on Mujahidin-i Khalq]. Others decided to continue the struggle against the shah abroad and formed an LMI-in-exile. The chief initiators of this move were ‘Ali Shari`ati, Ibrahim Yazdi, and Mustafa Chamran. The first was active in Paris until his return to Iran in 1964. Yazdi’s base was Houston, Texas, but he was also in close contact with Khomeini in Iraq. Chamran first worked in the United States but then moved to Lebanon, where he had a leading role in the formation of the Amal movement [see Amal].
The LMI reconstituted itself in 1977 with Bazargan as chairman. In 1978 the party would have preferred to accept the shah’s offer of free elections, but recognizing Khomeini’s hold on Iranian public opinion, it went along with Bazargan’s rejection of elections. In the last weeks of the shah’s regime, LMI figures played a leading role in negotiating with striking oil workers, military leaders, and U.S. diplomats to smooth the transfer of power to the revolutionaries. In 1979 most LMI leaders held key positions in the provisional government. After its ouster in the wake of the seizure of the U.S. hostages in November, the LMI gradually became an oppositional force. It was represented in the first parliament of the Islamic Republic but barred from presenting candidates in subsequent elections. After 1982 it sharply criticized Khomeini’s unwillingness to end the Iran-Iraq War. Since then its activities have been sharply restricted, and many of its leaders have been in and out of prison.
Remarkable continuity characterizes the LMI in its two periods of activity. The party’s program derives from a liberal interpretation of Shi’i Islam that rejects both royal and clerical dictatorship in favor of political and economic liberalism, which are both considered more conducive to the flowering of Islamic values than coercion. Based on a relatively narrow constituency of religiously inclined professionals, the party’s major weakness has been its inability to engender mass support.
[See also Iran; Iranian Revolution of 1979; and the biographies of Bdzargan, Khomeini, Pahlavi, Shari ati, and Taleqani.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Chehabi, H. E. Iranian, Politics and Religious Modernism: The Liberation Movement of Iran under the Shah and Khomeini. Ithaca, N.Y., and London, 1990. In-depth study of the history and ideology of the party.
H. E. CHEHABI

LEBANON

Batoota — Mon, 28 Jul 2014 07:31:43 +0000

LEBANON. In Lebanon’s remarkably diverse society eighteen separate sects or confessional groups are recognized within the political system. In addition to a variety of Christian sects, which account for about 40 percent of the country’s population, five Muslim sects are found in the country: Sunnis, Shfis, Druze, `Alawis, and Isma’ilis. As of 1992 the first four enjoyed political representation in parliament; the Isma’ilis, commonly referred to as “Seveners,” number only a few hundred and play no significant role in Lebanese politics. Personal status law, which governs key domains of social life such as marriage, divorce, birth and death, remains the preserve of religious officials.

The individual’s political identity in modern Lebanon is largely determined along sectarian lines. Even the 1989 Td’if Accord, which set the framework for ending the civil war that had raged since 1975, preserved the distribution of the major political offices among the major confessional groups. Thus the presidency remained the sole domain of the Maronite Christians, the office of prime minister continued to be a Sunni Muslim privilege, and the speaker of the parliament was to be ShM Muslim. The relative power of these offices changed somewhat, but the underlying principle of confessional distribution of political office and privilege was sustained. Thus religion continues to be a prime factor in defining Lebanese politics and society. In a very real sense, all Lebanese have a hyphenated identity; while religiosity may decline from one period to another, secularism has been only a weak force in public life.
Sunni Muslims. In the Arab world, as in the ummah, Sunni Islam accounts for nearly 9o percent of all Muslims, but in Lebanon the Sunnis represent only about one-fifth of the population. Nonetheless, until the 1980s the Sunnis were unquestionably the dominant Lebanese Muslim sect. Concentrated for the most part in the coastal cities-Tripoli, Saida, and especially Beirut-the Sunni Muslims held the privilege of speaking for Islam in Lebanon. Favored over four hundred years of Ottoman rule, Sunni Muslim leaders were senior partners in the founding of the modern republic. In fact, the unwritten National Pact (mithdq al-watani) of 1943, which defined the terms of confessional power-sharing in the independent state, was an agreement between the leading Sunni of the day, Riyad al-Sulh, and his counterpart from the Maronite community, Bisharah al-Khuri. AlSulh and al-Khuri became Lebanon’s first prime minister and president, respectively.
Unlike the Christian and Muslim sects that sought refuge in the hinterlands and mountains of Lebanon, the Sunni Muslims were at home in the Arab world. In 192o France, enjoying a League of Nations mandate over Lebanon, created Greater Lebanon (Le Grand Liban) in order to establish a viable state under Maronite domination. The Sunnis mounted resistance to the decision, preferring to be part of a greater Syria. The creation of Lebanon in 1943 was a compromise between the Sunnis’ preference for the independent state’s Arab identity and the Maronites’ preference for sustaining links with the West and France in particular.
Sunni prominence was reflected not only in the allocation of the position of prime minister but also with respect to religious leadership. As part of its Ottoman heritage, the mufti of the republic is a state employee, and the office is naturally filled by a senior Sunni cleric, usually one trained at al-Azhar, the venerable Islamic university in Cairo. “Azhar Lubnan,” as the shad `ah college in Beirut is known popularly, is of much lower status, and its graduates seldom enjoy great upward mobility. The Lebanese Sunnis generally follow the Shafi’i school of law (madhhab), although some Sunnis in the north follow the Maliki school.
The mufti of the republic is nominally the senior authority in interpreting Islamic law, but he effectively shares his authority. Lebanon is divided into provinces (the North, Mount Lebanon, Beirut, the South and Nabatiyah, and the Biqa` [Bekaa]), and in each province there is a shari `ah court headed by a mufti. In Beirut the mufti of the republic heads the provincial court, but the other provincial courts exercise a fair amount of autonomy. The Supreme Islamic Council, which until t969 nominally represented all Lebanese Muslims, is chaired by the mufti of the republic and is charged with representing Muslim interests in the nation.
There is a system of public schools in Lebanon, but many Lebanese attend private, confessionally organized schools where the quality of education usually surpasses that of the public schools. Among the Sunnis, the Maqassid Foundation (Jam’iyat al-Maqasid Khayriyah alIslamiyah, established 1878) oversees a number of schools, as well as a hospital in Beirut and a complex of other social-welfare institutions like orphanages. For many years the head of Maqassid was Sa’ib Salam, the prominent Sunni political boss or za’im who served several Lebanese governments.
Although senior Sunni clerics often enjoy a broad public reputation, few of them have exercised significant political power. In Sunni Islam, in contrast to the Shi’i pattern, the cleric is not indispensable to the practice of the faith, and most Sunni clerics remain dependent on the support of lay benefactors as well as the salaries provided by the state.
During the civil war only a relative handful of Sunni `ulama’ were actively engaged in organizing paramilitary forces. In Tripoli, Shaykh Said Sha’ban founded the Islamic Unity Movement (Harakat al-Tawhid alIslamiyah). Sha’ban, known for his militant views, maintained especially close ties with the Islamic Republic of Iran, and among the Sunni `ulama’ he is arguably Iran’s closest ally in Lebanon. The Rally of Muslim Clergymen (Tajammu` al `Ulama’ al-Muslimin) led by Shaykh Mahir Hammud, a Sunni, and Shaykh Zuhayr Kanj, a Shi’i, is committed to Muslim unity and argues that Sunni-Shi`i differences are merely juridical. Like Tawhid, the Rally is closely aligned with the Iraniansupported Party of God (Hizbullah); both emerged in 1982 following the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. Also noteworthy, though led by laypeople, is the older Islamic Group (al-Jama’ah al-Islamiyah) that grew out of the Muslim Brotherhood (Ikhwan al-Muslimun). The brotherhood has enjoyed a notable following among Lebanon’s Sunnis but has generally maintained a low public profile.
Shi’i Muslims. In contrast to the urban-dwelling Sunni Muslims, the ShNs lived for centuries on the periphery of Lebanon. Until the twentieth century they were concentrated in the south and in the northern Bekaa Valley, where most of them lived in deep poverty. Tribal organization prevailed in the Bekaa; in the south, the heartland of Shiism in Lebanon, the Shi’is comprised a large peasantry engaged in agricultural labor and subsistence farming in the hills and valleys of Jabal `Anvil (the region east of Tyre and Saida and centered on the city of Nabatiyah). The region is an important historic center for Shi`i scholarship and remains the heartland of Shiism in Lebanon.
In the census of 1932, the last official census conducted in Lebanon, the Shi’is were counted as the third-largest group in Lebanon and accordingly were allocated the position of speaker of the national assembly or parliament in the National Pact of 1943. Despite their numbers, the ShNs as a whole were decidedly subordinate to the Sunnis, who enjoyed generally higher social and economic status, reflecting their superior access to public services-including education, health, and sanitation-as well as centuries of preferential treatment under Ottoman rule. Only in the twentieth century did a significant number of Shl’! Muslims begin migrating from the hinterland to Beirut and to overseas locales-particularly West Africa, where an emerging Shl’! bourgeoisie won a financial foothold in the middle class.
The Shi’i counterpart to the Sunnis’ Maqassid Foundation is the `Amiliyah Foundation (Jam’iyat alKhayrlyah al-Islamiyah), created in 1923. It finances a range of welfare activities and religious events, especially ecumenical commemorations of the martyrdom of Imam Husayn, whose death in Karbala in 68o CE is the marking event in Shi history. The foundation’s most far-reaching program has been to support a number of schools, especially in village settings where only Qur’anic schools (kuttdb) existed previously, as well as an important high school in Beirut.
While the Shi’i middle class grew in size and ambition, the population share of the Shi’is swelled as well. Over time, and certainly by the early 1980s they comprised the largest single confessional group in Lebanon. Thus the underlying demographic logic for the dominance of the Sunni Muslims, not to mention the Maronites, came to be challenged.
As the forces of modernity were propelling the Shi’is into a potentially dominant political position in Lebanon, the ShN clergy was not left behind. The ShIN `ulama’ in contrast to their Sunni counterparts, are integral to the practice of the faith. The Lebanese Shi’is, except for the small community of Isma’ilis, are commonly referred to as Twelvers or Ithna `Ashari, a reference to the central role in their dogma of the Hidden Imam. In his absence the authoritative interpretation of religious law devolves to the Shi’i clergy, the mujtahids (those qualified to interpret the shari`ah). The believer, doctrinally incapable of autonomously interpreting the faith, must follow a qualified cleric in the Ja’fari school of Islamic law. The senior religious judge is the Ja’fari Mufti al-Mumtaz, presently `Abd al-Amir Qablan. Shaykh Qablan emerged as an assertive but moderate voice for Shl’! rights, especially in the 1980s and 1990s.
In the latter half of the twentieth century Najaf in Iraq became the locus for the reformulation of Shiism as an ideology of political activism and protest. Among the Lebanese leaders who were trained there are Musa al-Sadr, founder of the leading Shi`i populist movement in Lebanon; Muhammad Mahdi Shams al-Din, who heads the Supreme Shi`i Council; and Muhammad Husayn Fadlallah, the militant ideologue who has given definition to the Party of God or Hizbullah.
In 1967 the Lebanese parliament voted to create a Supreme Shic! Council (al-Majlis al-Shi’i al-A’la). The council began activity in 1969 under the presidency of Musa al-Sadr. Its founding marked the autonomy of the Shi`i community in Lebanon, no longer subsumed by the Islamic Council and the mufti of the republic. In 1974 al-Sadr created the Movement of the Deprived (Harakat al-Mahrumin), a dynamic force in Lebanese politics and the forerunner of Amal, the populist Shi’i movement.
Druze. The Druze people, offshoots of Isma`ili Shiism, trace the beginnings of their sect to Fatimid Egypt. After the mysterious eleventh-century disappearance of al-Hakim, the Fatimid ruler whom the Druze believe to be divine, they found refuge in what is today Israel, Syria, and Lebanon. The largest single concentration is in Lebanon, where approximately 200,000 Druze comprise about 7 percent of the population. They have long been associated with the history and governance of Mount Lebanon, and there are important concentrations of Druze in southern Lebanon, particularly in Rashaiya and Hasbaiya (site of the al-Baiyada monastic retreat).
Druze practitioners are dividers into two categoriesthe juhhdl (the ignorant) and the ‘uqqal (the mature or wise). Upon reaching middle age a Druze of either gender may opt to join the ‘uqqal and thereby be admitted to the study of the Messages of Wisdom, through which the tawhid (highest fulfillment of religious knowledge) is disclosed. The Druze do not proselytize, and membership is restricted to those born into the faith. Thus, even in a region in which endogamy is the rule, the Druze have been unusually successful in sustaining their communal identity.
Traditionally the Druze have been split between two factions, the Jumblatt (Junblat) and the Yazbak, although they have exhibited remarkable unity in times of tribulation. In fact, the Druze are unique in having sustained their solidarity throughout the fifteen years of civil war that wracked Lebanon from 1975 to 1990.
The highest legal authority among the Druze is the Mashyakat al-`Aql. In the 1950s and 1960s two men shared this position, one representing the Jumblattis and the other the Yazbakis. The Shaykh al -+`Aql heads a High Council that brings together distinguished men of religion with secular notables. The High Council is the counterpart to the Sunni Islamic Council and the Shi’i Supreme Council, and like those institutions it supervises the dispensation of justice and charity, the overseeing of religious trusts, and the operation of schools.
The Mashyakat al-`Aql plays an important role in linking the Druze community to the state, but the moral consensus of the Druze is sustained by the ajdwid, the religious specialists, who number about 1,500 or almost one per one hundred people. Each Druze village maintains a majlis that meets weekly on Thursday evenings. The majlis combines elements of a prayer meeting and a town meeting and is the forum where local issues are discussed. Major issues that confront the Druze as a whole are dealt with at a khilwa, a meeting of ajawids. The Druze distinguish between shaykhs of religion (shuyukh al-din) and shaykhs of the highway (shuyukh altariq) who wield coercive power; when the community is at risk, the shaykhs of religion predominate. Thus Druze ajdwids have not played any significant role in organizing political or paramilitary organizations.
`Alawis. The ruling minority in Syria, the `Alawis are numerically insignificant in Lebanon, where by the late 1980s they numbered about twenty thousand. However, with the growing influence of Syria on Lebanon, particularly after the Gulf War of 199o-1991, the `Alawis have risen in importance. In the 1992 parliamentary elections the `Alawi community was allocated two seats out of 128 (the parliamentary seats are now divided evenly between Muslims and Christians), marking the first time they enjoyed formal political representation in Lebanon.
The `Alawis revere `Ali as the last manifestation of divinity, and for this reason-coupled with their observance of a number of Christian and Persian holidays and their use of sacramental wine in religious ceremoniesthey are viewed as apostates by some Muslims. It is noteworthy, though, that the respected Shi`i leader Musa al-Sadr recognized the `Alawis as a Shi`i sect, thereby enhancing their legitimacy.
Like the Druze, the `Alawis divide society into two broad sectors, one centered on religion and the other on power and coercion. Thus they distinguish between emirs and imams-men of power and men of religion. Men of power who evince religious purity may, however, combine the two roles. Hafez al-Assad, the Syrian president and himself an `Alawi, approximates this coalescence of roles, and he is the dominant political figure for the Lebanese `Alawi community, which has benefited from his protection and leadership.
Conclusion. Islam in Lebanon is not an easy subject for generalization. If there is a theme that crosscuts the major Islamic sects, it is the rejection of secularization (‘ilmaniyah) in favor of preserving the sacred character of public life. Yet Lebanon’s confessional political system is widely condemned for its corruption, inequity, and instability. The challenge for Muslims in Lebanon is to preserve their identity as believers while improving a political system that is still badly in need of reform. Moreover, there is no denying the internal tensions that the rise of an assertive Shi`i community has provoked in Sunni quarters, and even more among the Druze.
Radical Islamic voices from both the Shi`i and Sunni communities have called for the replacement of the present regime with a government informed by the shari’ah, but some of the more thoughtful thinkers in these groups have long recognized that Lebanon’s diversity, including its large Christian minority, makes this infeasible. Moreover, there is no consensus even among Muslim activists about the form of an Islamist government in Lebanon. A striking feature of the 1990s is the inchoate willingness of many of these groups to change the system from within. Thus Hizbullah, notorious for its role in terrorist acts like the kidnapping of innocent foreigners, participated quite successfully in the 1992 elections. Although Lebanon is not a precise microcosm of the Arab world or the Middle East, it is still a fascinating experiment in managing cultural and religious diversity. The pragmatic adaptation that many Lebanese Muslims now demonstrate might well be an instructive example for other societies.
[See also `Alawiyah; Amal; Druze; Harakat al-Tawhid al-Islamil; Hizbullah, article on Hizbullah in Lebanon; Za’im; and the biographies of Fadlallah and Sadr. ]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bar, Luc-Henri de. Les communautes confessionnelles du Liban. Paris, 1983. Indispensable guide to all of Lebanon’s significant confessions.
Cobban, Helena. The Making of Modern Lebanon. London, 1985. Good introduction.
Collelo, Thomas, ed. Lebanon: A Country Study. 3d ed. Washington, D.C., 1989. Useful primer.
Collings, Deidre, ed. Peace for Lebanon? From War to Reconstruction. Boulder, 1994. Important collection of articles by leading scholars and participants in Lebanese politics.
Deeb, Marius K. Militant Islamic Movements in Lebanon: Origins, Social Basis, and Ideology. Washington, D.C., November 1986. Handy overview of some of the Sunni and Shi`i organizations that emerged in Lebanon over the course of the early 1980s.
Khalaf, Samir. Lebanon’s Predicament. New York, 1987. Fine collection of studies analyzing the creation of social organizations in Lebanon, among other themes.
Khuri, Fuad I. Imams and Emirs: State, Religion, and Sects in Islam. London, 1990. Thoughtful examination of the doctrines and social organization of a number of Middle Eastern Muslim and Christian sects, by a Lebanese social anthropologist.
Makarem, Sami N. The Druze Faith. Delmar, N.Y., 1974. One of the few reliable treatments available in English.
Mallat, Chibli. Shi’i Thought from the South of Lebanon. Oxford, 1988. Incisive introduction to Shi’i political thought.
Norton, Augustus Richard. Amal and the Shi`a: A Struggle for the Soul of Lebanon. Austin, 1987. Close look at the emergence of the Shi’i Muslims in Lebanese politics.
Saadeh, Safia Antoun. The Social Structure of Lebanon: Democracy or Servitude? Beirut, 1993. Provocative exploration of Lebanese politics in the post-civil war period.
Smock, David R., and Audrey C. Smock. The Politics of Pluralism: A Comparative Study of Lebanon and Ghana. New York, 1975. Dated but still useful analysis of how Lebanese politics “work.”
AUGUSTUS RICHARD NORTON

LAW

Batoota — Mon, 28 Jul 2014 06:46:18 +0000

LAW. [To treat the interaction between religions, this entry comprises four articles: Legal Thought and Jurisprudence Sunni Schools of Law .Shi’i Schools of Law Modern Legal Reform.The first surveys the historical development of religious in Islam; the second and third trace the rise of schools of law in the Sunni and Shi `i traditions; and the last presents an analysis of legal reform in the Muslim world in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. For discussion of more specific fields of Islamic law, see Criminal Law; Family Law; Public Law. See also International Law.]
Islamic law and Legal Thought and Jurisprudence
The idea of divine law in Islam is traditionally expressed by two words, fiqh and shari`ah. Fiqh originally meant understanding in a broad sense. The specialist usage, meaning understanding of the law, emerged at about the same time as the first juristic literature, in the late eighth and early ninth centuries. All efforts to elaborate details of the law, to state specific norms, to justify them by reference to revelation, to debate them, or to write books or treatises on the law are examples of fiqh. The word connotes human and specifically scholarly activity. By contrast, shari`ah refers to God’s law in its quality as divine. Loosely used, it can indicate Islam, God’s religion. It refers to God’s law as it is with him or with his Prophet, or as it is contained (potentially) within the corpus of revelation. Practitioners of fiqh (the fuqaha’; sg., faqih) try to discover and give expression to the shari’ah. For Muslims, the shari`ah evokes loyalty and is a focus of faith; fiqh evokes at best respect for juristic scholarship and for a literary tradition-and, among some modern thinkers, distaste for dry-as-dust legalism. The word shari `ah is sometimes used in place of fiqh, in which case its positive connotations will be transferred to the scholarly tradition; it has also been applied to actual bureaucratic systems thought to conform adequately to the norms expressed in theoretical writingsalways a matter of perception. Western designation of the Muslim juristic tradition as “Islamic law” has led to the emergence, perhaps in the late nineteenth century, of the calque realized in Arabic as al-qanun al-Islam!, and now part of the vocabulary in all Muslim countries. This phrase, though applied to the tradition as a whole, carries many of the connotations of “legal system” in a Western sense, related to the bureaucratic structures of a nation-state. Such ideas have now permeated much Muslim thinking about the law.
Juristic Schools and Hermeneutical Traditions. The traditional processes of juristic understanding depend on a theological construct that is presented as history. It states that the words and actions of the prophet Muhammad (his sunnah), being an embodiment of the divine command and an expression of God’s law (shari `ah), were preserved by the companions of the Prophet and their followers in the form of discrete anecdotes (hadith). These were transmitted from generation to generation, inspiring first discussion and then systematic juristic thinking (fiqh). Beginning in about the mideighth century, a number of masters made distinctive contributions to the discipline that stimulated the emergence of separate traditions or schools. The most important masters for the Sunnis are Abu Hanifah (d. about 767), Malik ibn Anas (d. 795), Muhammad ibn Idris al-Shafi’i (d. 820), and Ahmad ibn Hanbal (d. 855), associated respectively with the Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi’i, and Hanbali schools. The four Sunni schools acknowledged one another and gave more or less qualified recognition to a number of other short-lived schools that emerged within Sunnism; the most important was probably the Zahirl (Literalist) school, whose major exponent was `Ali ibn Hazm (d. 1064).
Of sectarian groups, only the Ithna `Ashari (or Imami) Shl’is generated a continuous and creative juristic tradition that matched the Sunni traditions. They looked back to the sixth imam, Ja`far al-Sadiq (d. 756), as a founding figure. The Zaydis, Kharijis, and Isma’ilis all produced minor traditions.
Development of the law within the schools can be seen to depend on two major hermeneutical principles. The first, the synchronic principle, required that any formulation of the law, at any time, must be justifiable by reference to revelation. The second, the diachronic principle, was equally important, though frequently overlooked by observers and possibly underestimated by some practitioners. It required that participants in a school tradition, whether Sunni or Shi i, preserve loyalty to the tradition by taking into account the interpretative achievement of older masters; the law had to be justifiable by reference to the continuity and established identity of the school. Muslim jurists were not, as individuals, in solitary and direct confrontation with revelation: they found their way back to the meaning of revelation through tradition. This principle was a source of strength and flexibility, for the tradition held the accumulated experience of the community and gave it a sophisticated literary form. It was nonetheless sometimes attacked. Within Sunnism, the Z, ahiris objected to precisely this feature of juristic thought and advocated instead a return to a literal reading of the sources. The same mood, if not the same extreme, is expressed in the Salafi (Primitivist-the word salaf refers to the earliest generations of Islam) orientation associated with Ibn Taymiyah (d. 1328), and perhaps in the Akhbari movement within Imam! Shiism. All these movements evince distrust of the complexity and indeterminacy expressed in the ongoing dominant traditions.
Revelation in the classical period meant the canonical collections of hadith (the Shi`is and the Sunnis had different collections) and the Qur’an. These two were equal qua authority, although the Qur’an was superior in its nature and origins (word of God, miracle). The hadith collections, by virtue of their size alone, dominated the hermeneutical process, but the relationship between Qur’an and hadith was difficult to express. Some jurists accepted that the sunnah might “abrogate” the Qur’an; others preferred to say that the sunnah “passed judgement” on the Qur’an, or that it “clarified” and “explained.” There were variant views within schools. Whatever the preferred wording, none would disagree with the statement attributed to the Syrian jurist Awza`i (d. 774) that the Book is in greater need of the sunnah than the sunnah is of the Book. The vitality, complexity, and exuberance of fiqh literature-and many of the fundamental norms of the law-are unthinkable except in relation to the large body of revelation constituted by hadith.
Western Scholarship on Islamic Law. Modern historians have not generally accepted the traditional account of the origins of Islamic law. They have produced an important aiternative account, associated with the names of the three scholars Ignacz Goldziher (1888189o), Joseph Schacht (1950), and John Wansbrough (1977). Goldziher demonstrated that historical and theological h adith could not be accepted as reflecting the lifetime of the Prophet, but must be the product of dispute within the community throughout the first and second centuries after the Hijrah. Schacht extended this insight to include juristic hadith, perceived by him as not a cause but a product of juristic debate in Muslim communities. Wansbrough has argued that the Qur’an too is not a product of the Prophet’s lifetime but a liturgical reflection of two hundred years of community worship and sectarian debate. For this tradition of scholarship, revelation is not an event but a process; its creative agent is not the Prophet but the community (or communities); and its geographical locus is not the Hejaz but the Muslim cities of North Africa, Syria, and Iraq.
With specific regard to the juristic traditions, Schacht argued that these began as local traditions in Medina, Basra, Kufa, and other cities, reflecting local practice at a greater or lesser distance. Even if the local traditions were claimed to be prophetic in origin (which is likely), the idea that legal norms must be related directly to prophetic hadith emerged only gradually, as a result of polemical debate among different communities or segments of community. The real architect of the classical hermeneutical system, according to Schacht, was Saafi’i. In works attributed to him are found the first systematic arguments that defend norms by reference to ,hadith or derive norms directly from them. His Risalah contains the first general account of the methodology of relating law to revealed texts. Many western scholars and Muslims have reacted to Schacht’s theories with dismay and have tried to reassert the core of truth that (it is claimed) must lie behind the traditional accounts of the origins of Islam and of Islamic law.
Modern scholarship has made little progress in describing the characteristics of Islamic law in the classical period or in providing a sensible and justified periodization. From the tenth century to the nineteenth, the formal structures of juristic literature, and many specific statements, imply that the shad `ah is a set of static and unchanging norms. This is an illusion deliberately contrived to stress diachronic continuity and synchronic harmony with revelation. The literature in fact admits (to a degree) the reality of development, for example, in ubiquitous reference to the moderns and the ancients (al-muta’akhkhirun, al-mutaqaddimun). Western scholars have not found it easy to describe or assess this development. Failing to find a terminology that will uncover the purpose or acknowledge the degrees of openness and creativity that characterize hermeneutical traditions of this kind, they have perpetrated a number of errors. At the most general level, they have described nearly all of the tradition in terms such as decline, decay, failure, or ankylosis. More specifically, Schacht, in an uncharacteristically muddled set of arguments, asserted that the “closing of the door of ijtihdd,” meaning an end to independent reasoning in the law, began about goo. He may have intended something sensible, but the pernicious results of these comments have haunted academic descriptions of Islamic law ever since; recent studies suggest improvement.
Juristic Literature. The literature of fiqh is of two kinds, furs` al -fiqh (branches) and usul al -fiqh (roots). It is sometimes said that works of the latter type explore the four sources (or roots) of the law, namely Qur’an, sunnah, consensus (ijma`), and analogical reason (qiyas). [See Consensus; Usul al-Figh.] This is an indigenous but inadequate description. Such works do contain a definition of revelation, which may be extended to include the words and actions of the companions, but their main purpose is to describe the intellectual structures that can be brought to bear on revelation for the purposes of interpretation. These begin with linguistic and rhetorical sciences, usually dealt with under simple antithetical headings: general and particular, command and prohibition, obscure and clear, truth and metaphor. With regard to hadith alone, the epistemological categories of multiple and single transmission (tawatur and shad, with only the former giving certain knowledge) are discussed. The workings of abrogation (naskh), the application, ramifications, and limitations of analogical argument, and the value and limits of consensus, are all discussed, along with a variable body of other materials. The whole set of interpretative structures is brought together in the idea of ijtihdd. As a juristic term, this means the exertion of the utmost possible effort to discover, on the basis of revelation interpreted in the light of all the rules, the ruling on a particular juristic question. The theory of ijtihdd in its several forms concedes that there will be variant views on all but the fundamental structures of the law. By acknowledging dispute, it preempts its capacity to divide. It justifies the authority of the fuqaha’, who alone have the right to give rulings, which must be obeyed by the masses. Finally, it controls and justifies intellectual play and so permits the remarkable florescence of juristic literature that characterizes all Islamic societies down to the nineteenth century (and in some areas beyond it).
In spite of many differences of detail, the broad structures and all the major topics of usul works are the same for Sunnis and Shi`is. Initially resistant to the idea of ijtihad, the Shi’i tradition embraced it in the works of `Allamah al-Hills (d. 1325), and, in spite of internal disputes, they have made it a central part of their juristic thinking. The Shi’is also lay considerable theoretical stress on the independent capacity of the intellect to make moral and ethical judgements, but this scarcely affected the overall structure of their works. [See the biography of Hili. ]
The literature of furu’ consists fundamentally of norms that regulate (or appear to regulate) all areas of community ritual and public social life. They are usually divided into `ibadat (rituals) and mu`amalat (social relations). More sophisticated divisions have been attempted, but the preferred approach of the fuqaha’ was atomistic, topic by topic. Only the superior significance of ritual was consistently marked by placing it at the beginning of a work. The topics of ritual are purity, prayer, alms (zakat), pilgrimage, fasting, and sometimes jihad. The remaining topics occurred in no stable order and included at least the following: marriage, divorce, and inheritance; rules of buying, selling, lending, hire, gift, testamentary bequest, agency, deposit, and so on; crimes, torts, penalties, and compensations for injury; judicial practice and procedure; rules relating to slaves, land ownership and holding, contractual partnerships, slaughter of animals for food, oaths and their effects, and more. The list was capable of considerable conceptual refinement, but it was finite and more or less closed. Its major technical terminology was static. Real developments in social life following the formation of the tradition might be caught in the network of the law through exploration and refinement of concepts, but much was not; moreover, little was lost from the tradition, even when it became irrelevant to real life. Thus the terminology and the reality of governmental administration scarcely entered works of fiqh, even when it was more or less recognized by the fuqaha’ as a realization of shard `ah (as under the Ottomans). Conversely, between theory and practice is not predictable. Different areas of the law generated different kinds of theory/ practice relationships, few of which have been given serious consideration by modern scholars. Criminal law in the shari`ah is limited to only a few specified crimes. Exploration of these within fiqh is extensive but almost never refers to the reality of practical administration, though the fuqaha’ were not unaware of the governmental systems, often based on local practice, that actually existed. Some principles of international law are articulated under the topic jihad, but the fuqaha’ explored the tradition and not the needs or the desires of contemporary governors. No Sunni faqih, for example, denied the right of every individual Muslim to issue a valid and binding contract of safe-conduct (aman) to individuals from non-Islamic territory, yet no governing institution could ever have tolerated such practice. [See Diplomatic Immunity.]
The only areas of the law that were, in premodern times, systematically transformed into administrative structures were those related to the office of judge (qadi). His competence traditionally covered many aspects of family law (marriage, divorce, inheritance, testamentary bequest), the administration of charitable endowments (waqf) and the property of orphans, declaratory judgments on the significance and validity of contracts, and civil disputes. In order to make this administrative system work, there had to be compromises with theory. In the Sunni system, the governor (just or unjust) was accorded the absolute right to appoint judges and to define their spheres of competence; he also had the right in areas of juristic dispute to declare the rules that would be put into effect. Various types of judicial hierarchy emerged to ensure predictability and order in judicial decisions. Numerous subordinate officials and deputy judges derived their authority from appointment by the qadi. (In spite of the de jure illegitimacy of Shi’i rulers, the practical situation was not very different under Shi i governments.)
Many aspects of civil and criminal law could not be dealt with under the norms of the shari`ah, and some of the norms of the shad `ah could not be rendered practically effective. (If the laws of evidence were preemptively stringent in the case of fornication, they were probably too easy in the case of wine-drinking; few qadis could listen to unlimited complaints against neighbors who drank wine.) Careful definition of spheres of judicial competence was one way of dealing with these problems. But already by early `Abbasid times, a system of courts was required in addition to the qadis courts, which would take a more expedient and flexible approach to shar’i rules and might in some areas go beyond them. These were initially called mazalim (“injustices”) courts, though the nomenclature varied through time. They were administered directly by the governing bureaucracy, usually with the help and advice of trained jurists. They dealt with complaints against government officials and administered an extended criminal law that was only loosely related to shad `ah. Petty crimes were often dealt with by local police and market inspectors in accordance with local custom, again loosely linked to shari `ah.
Probably the most significant theoretical exploration of the law in relation to judicial practice, in the classical period, is contained in the Kitab adab al-qadi of the Shafi`i jurist al-Mawardi (d. 1058), one of a long tradition of monographs on judicial authority. The most effective and complex practical exploitation of the qadi. s office took place in the Ottoman Empire. Here the integration of the qadi. s office into a bureaucratic structure was accompanied by a considerable expansion of the practical and administrative duties of the judge, causing the separate mazalm-type structures to disappear.
The second major institutional office that emerged to serve the structures of fiqh was that of mufti. Originally, a mufti was any qualified mujtahid who was capable of providing reasoned responses (fatwas) to the questions of those not educated in the law. Informal muftis never disappeared, but, in the Sunni community, governmental structures often signaled official preference for some muftis over others. In the Ottoman period, officially appointed muftis became fully integrated into the structures of government. The rulings of a mufti could be issued on request to individuals, to gddis, and to agents of government, and could have broadly legitimizing effect (e.g., in respect to government policies) or, if translated into government edicts, strict practical effect (e.g., in relation to judicial practice).
The great Ottoman jurist-administrator and grand mufti of Istanbul, Abu SAW (d. 1574), may be taken as representative of those jurists whose achievement in the law was thoroughly practical. He brought the real taxcollecting activities of the empire (in practice varied and based on regional traditions) under the formal, technical terminology of fiqh. This was in part a control on arbitrary taxation, but it also provided a reasonable degree of legitimacy and authority to the working system of the day. For Abu Sa’ud, the Ottoman system was a broad realization of the shari`ah, and his aim was to ensure that it was a practical, efficient, and more or less just system. This required the recognition of governmental decrees (gdnuns), the promulgation of administrative rules that were not reflected in traditional fiqh (though they were felt not to contravene shari`ah), and decisive rulings on matters of dispute. In a fatwd, Abu Sa`ud declared that there can be no decree of the sultan ordering something that is illegal according to the shad `ah, thereby committing jurists to a considerable hermeneutical task or to formal, discursive opposition. He declared that marriage without a qadi’s knowledge was invalid, subsequent to the issue of a sultanic decree to that effect-thereby serving the interests of orderly administration, even though the shari`ah does not require any form of registration for a valid marriage. He also gave rulings in favor of the cash-waqf (pious foundations in the form of cash). Governmental decrees confirmed the latter ruling, but in the tradition of Hanafi fiqh, the legitimacy of cash-waqfs remained a matter of dispute.
In the Shi`i world, though low-ranking jurists might serve the government, the highest-ranking jurists preserved their independence. Consolidation of theory and improvements in communication led in the nineteenth century to a strengthening of their position and the emergence of a new titulature (notably marja` al-taqlid) reflecting their increasing status. They had great capacity for political gestures, usually marking their dissociation from government, but, significantly, no opportunity for the mundane, bureaucratic, participatory legitimizing activities of Sunni fuqaha’. [See also Marja` al-Taqlid. ]
Modern Developments. The nineteenth century brought changes, and in many areas a gradual end, to the indigenous traditions of fiqh. New ideas from the West, a defensive analysis of Islam, and not least the emergence of secular educational systems that excluded traditional juristic studies, all helped to precipitate new approaches to the law. Muslim administrators and Muslim reformists alike began to feel that the shad `ah ought to be practical and to resemble Western codes. The earliest sign of movement in this direction came with the enactment of the Mecelle in 1876 by the Ottoman authorities. This was a Hanafi codification of some parts of the shari`ah, designed for practical purposes. It remains partially effective in some former Ottoman territories (e.g., Iraq and Israel). [See Mecelle.] The Egyptian reformer Muhammad `Abduh (d. 1905) advocated a new, creative approach to ijtihdd: a disregard of school traditions as such, and an eclectic approach to the tradition as a whole (an approach known as talfiq, “patchwork”). His aim was to define and embody in administrative and institutional forms specific rules that would serve the needs of independent Muslim communities. The Shi`i tradition showed its ability to accommodate modern law-making techniques when a majority of high-ranking jurists rallied to the cause of the constitution in Iran in 1906.
With the withdrawal of imperialist and mandate authorities from the Middle East and elsewhere, modern Muslim nations have for the most part provided themselves with practical, eclectic law codes that draw on ideas from both the Muslim tradition and the West. It is in the traditional practical areas of marriage, divorce, and inheritance that the influence of the shari’ah has been strongest. Some countries (e.g., Tunisia) have achieved notably progressive codes of personal status while still asserting a very creative interpretative link between the code and the tradition of fiqh. The greatest theoretician of the idea that the shari`ah could be a source for practical and effective codification was probably the Egyptian jurist `Abd al-Razzaq al-Sanhuri, who played a part in drafting new civil codes for more than one Arab country. The magnitude of the achievement of modern Muslim states in creating and implementing their new legal structures is rarely appreciated outside legal circles, but it is an achievement of immense importance and complexity, and not one that is unduly at odds with the practical history of the shari`ah.
If codification is one aspect of the heritage of nineteenth-century reform, another, more complex, is Islamic fundamentalism. This term is used in many ways, not always carefully. In the history of religious doctrine it can describe those movements that deny the authority of tradition and overleap the accumulated historical and intellectual experience of the community to return to the sources, the early generations, the fundamentals. In this sense, it is possible to recognize in the history of Islam a recurring fundamentalist tendency, which can be associated with, for example, the Zahiris (Literalists) and the Salafis (Primitivists). The word fundamentalist is also used to describe groups that espouse radical or activist political views. It is not accidental that many of these groups, from the Wahhabis of the eighteenth century to the Muslim Brothers of the twentieth, have also been fundamentalist in a strictly doctrinal sense. They are explicitly Salafi, and they look back to the great Salafi theoretician Ibn Taymiyah as symbol and hero. Here too Muhammad `Abduh bears a measure of responsibility for initiating a tradition of distaste for the Muslim intellectual traditions (as well as for the mystical experience of the Sufis). Sayyid Qutb, the ideologue of the Muslim Brothers executed in Egypt in 1966, was in this respect an intellectual descendant of `Abduh. For him, in the end, all of Islamic history after the early generations was only a continuation of the Jahiliyah, the Age of Ignorance, and the works of the fuqaha’ were something like a betrayal of the existential task they should have executed. In his work of Qur’anic exegesis, Fi zildl al-Qur’dn, he frequently made the point: “The shari`ah has been revealed in order to be implemented, not to be known, to be studied, and to be changed into culture in books and treatises” (Beirut, 1971, vol. I, p. 746). This reverses the priorities and denies the achievement of an ancient juristic tradition of thought and literature; and it promotes the word shari`ah as if it designated a blueprint for the Islamic state. In this form, shari `ah could be part of a call to political action, and it was subject to the usual constraints of political expediency. This has sometimes taken the form of promoting fragments of the law as symbols of islamization. For example, in Sudan in 1983, President Nimeiri enacted the Islamic canonical penalties for fornication, wine-drinking, and other offenses. Politically insensitive at best, these moves (reenacted and extended later by an Islamic government) were also a trivialization of the tradition of fiqh.
The Islamic Revolution in Iran (1978-1979) is sometimes described as a fundamentalist movement, but it is not so in the strictly doctrinal sense. The theory that underlay the Ayatollah Khomeini’s propaganda and provided him legitimacy in his own eyes and in those of his followers was central to the tradition of juristic thought in ShN Islam. Khomeini built on the tradition; he did not abandon or cheapen it. And the tradition was not in the end incompatible with substantial continuity in the constitutional and legal structures of Iran, as well as in its political institutions.
Islamic law has been throughout the history of Islamic culture the prime focus of intellectual effort. It is a correspondingly complex affair, a structure in which several traditions of juristic thought and many types of social reality have had to be discovered to be in some kind of justificatory harmony with one another and with the texts of revelation. Its rewards as an object of study are evident. For the Muslim community, the assimilation of its messages to the needs of the current generation is, now as in the past, both an intellectual and an imaginative challenge, as well as a generally acknowledged a religious duty.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Anderson, J. N. D. Law Reform in the Muslim World. London, 1976. Goldziher, Ignacz. Muhammedanische Studien. z vols. Halle, 18881890. London, 1967.
Heyd, Uriel. Studies in Old Ottoman Criminal Law. Edited by V. L. Menage. Oxford, 1973.
Liebesny, Herbert J. The Law of the Near and Middle East: Readings, Cases, and Materials. Albany, N.Y., 1975.
Schacht, Joseph. The Origins of Muhammadan jurisprudence. Oxford, 1950.
Schacht, Joseph. An Introduction to Islamic Law. Oxford, 1964. Wansbrough, John. Quranic Studies. Oxford, 1977.
NORMAN CALDER
Continue:Sunni Schools of Law
Shi i Schools of Law
Modern Legal reforms

LABOR PARTY OF EGYPT

Batoota — Mon, 28 Jul 2014 06:29:16 +0000

LABOR PARTY OF EGYPT. The only legal Islamist party in Egypt, and from 1987 the leading opposition party, the Labor Party was founded as the Socialist Labor Party in December 1978. It was represented in the Egyptian parliament, the People’s Assembly, from 1979 until 1990. In the 1987 elections, the last in which the opposition took part, the Labor Party became the leading opposition party with 17 percent of the vote and 56 out of 448 representatives. Only 22 of these representatives, however, were party members; the majority were Muslim Brothers; the brothers, denied recognition as a political party, had joined an Islamic alliance with the Labor Party and the small Liberal Party. The parliamentary elections of 1990 were boycotted by the opposition; however, in the local elections in 1992 the Labor-Muslim Brothers alliance emerged even more clearly than before as the dominant opposition force. The Party’s twice-weekly newspaper, Al-sha’b (The People), has increased its circulation from 45,000 in late 1985 to 250,000 in early 1994, making it the largest opposition paper.

labour party Egypt logo

Origin. Ibrahim Shukri, the president of the Labor Party from its inception, was a member of the last parliament before the 1952 revolution. He was the only representative of the Socialist Party, the name taken by the Young Egypt movement from 1949 This movement, founded in 1933, was strongly nationalist and anti-British. Its form of Egyptian nationalism fused quite different ideological strands: it emphasized the pharaonic heritage but at the same time took pride in Egypt’s Arabism, advocating exclusive use of the Arabic language in all fields of life. It advocated Islamic morals as the basis for a sound social life and national strength and demanded the application of the shari `ah. Its program of social reform included radical land reform, expanded and cheap education, and an extensive program of state-led industrialization.
The early Labor Party membership was dominated by former Young Egypt members and sympathizers. `Adil
Husayn, at present the undisputed ideologue of the party, considers its line today to be a continuation of the ideas of Ahmad Husayn, the charismatic founder and leader of Young Egypt. Kinship also binds the party to the Young Egypt tradition: `Adil Husayn is Ahmad Husayn’s younger brother; Muhammad Hilmi Murad, vice president of the Labor Party, is a brotherin-law of the Husayn brothers; and Majdi Husayn, editor of the party newspaper since 1993, is the son of Ahmad Husayn.
Ideology. The Labor Party was initially basically a radical nationalist party. At the party’s fifth congress in March 1989, however, a clearcut Islamist platform was voted in, and the positions of leadership were filled exclusively with Islamists. This provoked a major split, and many leading members, including half the parliamentary group, refused to accept the results of the conference.
A former communist, `Adil Husayn, general secretary of the party since 1993, refers to his ideas as “enlightened Islamism.” He favors applying the shari`ah, but he emphasizes that it must be a shari `ah for the twenty-first century. There are some clear rulings in the Qur’an and sunnah, but wide scope is left for human reason to interpret the law in keeping with changing times and circumstances.
The Labor Party’s immediate political goal is putting an end to the present one-party rule and the emergency laws that severely limit freedom of political activity. The fight against corruption at high levels is also high on the agenda and has earned the party much popular sympathy. The party links its stand for democracy to Islam: because Islam recognizes no priesthood with a monopoly on interpreting the scriptures, the existence of different interpretations is legitimate, and this may crystallize into different political programs and parties. However, this freedom must be regulated by respect for the Islamic framework of the state, and for what Husayn calls the state’s “grand strategy for development.” This strategy should aim at building a strong independent Egypt that satisfies the material and spiritual needs of its inhabitants. Local production should be boosted in order to secure independence, and this will involve strict regulation of imports. Private capital must accept working within the limits of such a strategy.
The party is very critical of the economic open-door policy initiated under President Anwar Sadat, which it sees as undermining the basis for independent development and as carrying with it a redistribution of wealth from the poor to the rich. The Labor Party strongly opposes the present IMF-sponsored reforms-cutting food subsidies, reducing remaining import barriers, and letting foreign capital buy into a privatized public sector. The West, primarily the United States with its local ally Israel, is seen as the main enemy of Egyptian and Arab development. The party sharply criticized the U.S.-led coalition that fought Iraq during the Gulf War.
The discourse of the Labor Party on economic reform highlights an important difference in its general approach to politics when compared with its alliance partner, the Muslim Brothers. The writings of the Brothers on economic issues tend to proceed from traditional Islamic precepts like the canonical tax (zakdt) or prohibition of interest (ribd), which they discuss in the abstract. In contrast, the Labor Party proceeds from concrete analyses of Egypt’s development problems. Islam is not seen so much as offering readymade solutions but rather as a moral force to unite the population in enduring the effort and hardships of independent development, as well as offering broad principles of social justice and harmony. In this sense the Labor Party can be seen as a modernist wing within the broader Islamist movement.
Achieving unity with the Egyptian Copts on an Islamic platform is a stated goal; in fact, in the 1987 elections the Labor Party-Muslim Brothers alliance was the only party to have a Copt topping a slate. The party states that the Copts should have equal rights, including political rights, “at all levels,” although it is not clear whether this actually means that a Copt would be acceptable as president or as minister for education.
The electoral alliance with the Muslim Brothers and the opening of the pages of Al-sha’b to the Islamist movement at large express a central concern of the Labor Party: the establishment of the broadest possible unity both within and beyond the Islamist movement vis-a-vis the government. In particular, the party tries to bridge the traditional gap between the Muslim Brothers and the Nasserist tendencies within the opposition. [See also Egypt.]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Burgat, Franqois, and William Dowell. The Islamic Movement in North Africa. Austin, 1993. Excellent analysis of the growth of Islamism, containing a presentation of the intellectual development of the Labor Party ideologue, `Adil Husayn.
Jankowski, James P. Egypt’s Young Rebels. Stanford, Calif., 1975. Main source for the history of the Young Egypt movement. Singer, Hanaa Fikri. The Socialist Labor Party: A Case Study of a Contemporary Egyptian Opposition Party. Cairo, 1993. Gives a brief outline of the party’s history, with special emphasis on the struggle over the “islamization” of the party.
Springborg, Robert. Mubarak’s Egypt: Fragmentation of the Political Order. Boulder, 1989. Gives a well-informed account of the emergence of the present party system in Egypt.
BJORN OLAV UTVIK