About the Book
The basic point of the secular in the modern West is to "liberate" certain pursuits--the state, the economy, science--from the authority of religion. This is also assumed to be the goal and meaning of "secular" in Islam. Sherman Jackson argues, however, that that assumption is wrong. In Islam the "secular" was neither outside "religion" nor a rival to it. "Religion," in Islam was not identical to Islam's "sacred law," or "shari'ah." Nor did classical Muslim
jurists see shari'ah as the all-encompassing, exclusive means of determining what is "Islamic." In fact, while, as religion, Islam's jurisdiction was unlimited, shari'ah's jurisdiction, as a sacred law, was
limited. In other words, while everything remained within the purview of the divine gaze of the God of Islam, not everything could be determined by shari'ah or on the basis of its revelatory sources. Various aspects of state-policy, the economy, science, and the like were "differentiated," from shari'ah and its revelatory sources, without becoming non-religious or un-Islamic. Given the asymmetry between the circumference of shari'ah and that of Islam as religion, not
everything that fell outside the former fell outside the latter. In other words, an idea or action could be non-shar'i (not dictated by shari'ah) without being non-Islamic, let alone anti-Islam. The ideas and actions that fall
into this category are what Jackson terms "the Islamic Secular." Crucially, the Islamic Secular differs from the Western secular in that, while the whole point of the Western secular is to liberate various pursuits from religion, the Islamic Secular differentiates these disciplines not from religion but simply from shari'ah. Similarly, while both secularization and secularism play key roles in the Western secular, both of these concepts are alien to the Islamic
Secular, as the Islamic Secular seeks neither to discipline nor to displace religion, nor expand to its own jurisdiction at religion's expense. The Islamic Secular is a complement to religion, in effect, a
"religious secular." Nowhere are the practical implications of this more impactful than in Islam's relationship with the modern state. In this book, Jackson makes the case for the Islamic Secular on the basis of Islam's own pre-modern juristic tradition and shows how the Islamic Secular impacts the relationship between Islam and the modern state, including the Islamic State.
Table of Contents:
Introduction
Chapter 1: The Conceptual Landscape: Secular, Religious, Islamic
Chapter 2: Islam, Fiqh, the Hukm Shar'i and the Differentiated Realm
Chapter 3: The Islamic Secular
Chapter 4: The Islamic Secular and the Impossible State
Chapter 5: The Islamic Secular and the Secular State
Chapter 6: The Islamic Secular and Liberal Citizenship
Conclusion
Bibliography
About the Author :
Sherman A. Jackson is King Faisal Chair of Islamic Thought and Culture and Professor of Religion and American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California. Prior to that, he spent many years at the University of Michigan's Department of Middle East Studies. He is the author of numerous books, including Islamic Law and the State: The Constitutional Jurisprudence of Shihab al-Din al-Qarafi (E.J. Brill, 1996), Islam
and the Blackamerican: Looking Toward the Third Resurrection (OUP 2005), Islam and the Problem of Black Suffering (OUP 2009), and Sufism for Non-Sufis: Ibn 'Ata' Allah al-Sakandari's Taj al-'Arus (OUP 2012).
Review :
The Islamic Secular is a courageous and path-setting work, exploring afresh the relationship between Islamic law and Islam as a faith tradition. Rigorous, innovative, brilliant and daring to ask new questions, Sherman A. Jackson forces us to rethink accepted boundaries. He offers new conceptual keys to re-imagine the relationship between religion and the secular. A tour de force!
This is a thought-provoking map of the forgotten history of the metes and bounds of sharīʿa, and a tour through the perpetual space beyond it. Each encounter involves an interpretive endeavor, both inside and beyond Islamic law's jurisdiction. Beyond it, encounters are both religious and secular whenever Muslims ethically seek to solve societal challenges in governance and even law (or anything else), in ways that proceed, according to Dr. Jackson, 'under the conscious awareness of the divine gaze.' True, these encounters require constant deliberation and reconsideration. But they promise better answers in both bounded spaces of Islamic law and expansive spaces of the 'Islamic secular.' It is a tour worth taking.
The book contains a helpful introduction and a clarifying conclusion of the fundamental principles presented here. It also presents an important contribution to Islamic speculative jurisprudence and theology. Library collections in Islamic studies, political science, and other traditions of political theology will benefit from this work. Highly recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty; professionals.
The Islamic Secular, a thick, dense, and elaborate monograph by Sherman A. Jackson, Distinguished Professor of Religion at the University of Southern California, is one such book that deserves attention-by both Muslims and others who are interested in the destiny of Islam.
The book is undeniably rich and comprehensive, offering a thorough perspective that prompts Western Islamic scholars and practicing Muslims to think carefully, as it challenges discourses in both groups.
The Islamic Secular presents a thought-provoking and innovative approach in the realm of Islamic studies, aiming to dispel the notion that Islam and secularity are fundamentally opposed to one another. Future research, including that by Jackson and others, may further explore the various connections between Islam and the secular-connections that this groundbreaking work has begun to uncover but has not fully explored.
