• The Life of Shari'a
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The Life of Shari'a

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Is there a way to think about contemporary life with knowledge that is neither modern nor Western? Rather than confining Islam to a “religion” and shariʿa to its “law,” Youssef Belal provocatively ...
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  • 27 May 2025
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Is there a way to think about contemporary life with knowledge that is neither modern nor Western? Rather than confining Islam to a “religion” and shariʿa to its “law,” Youssef Belal provocatively argues that Islamic shariʿa is a mode of knowledge with its own concepts and scholarly categories through which the world and the self are grasped. The Life of Shariʿa considers two intertwined lineages: how Islamic scholars have formulated knowledge from the classical period to today and how Westerners have understood the law and its origins. By melding these two traditions, Belal puts the formation of modern law under a new light and offers, through a compelling conceptualization of shariʿa, a powerful argument for its continued relevance to the life of contemporary Muslims.
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Price: $34.95
Pages: 374
Publisher: University of California Press
Imprint: University of California Press
Publication Date: 27 May 2025
Trim Size: 9.00 X 6.00 in
ISBN: 9780520410039
Format: Paperback
BISACs:

Youssef Belal is an anthropologist and political theorist. He is also a UN diplomat and peace mediator who served as political director of UN missions in the Middle East, Central Asia, and the Horn of Africa. He has taught at Columbia University and the University of California, Berkeley, and was named a member of Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study in 2016. He is author of Le cheikh et le calife: Sociologie religieuse de l’Islam politique au Maroc (The sheikh and the caliph: Religious sociology of political Islam in Morocco).
Contents
 
Preface and Acknowledgments
Note on Translation and Transliteration
 
Introduction
 
Part One. Politics
1. Jurisprudence of the Revolution
2. Law, Power, and Shariʿa’s Incompleteness
 
Part Two. Spirituality
3. Spiritual Ethics and the Unseen World
4. The Spiritual Topography of the Self in Classical Islam
5. Truth of the Law, Truth of the Self, and Dis-embodiment
 
Part Three. Jurisprudence
6. Worship, Social Interactions, and Shariʿa’s Displacement
7. Islamic Legal Knowledge and the New Real
 
Part Four. Episteme
8. Kalām and the Islamic Episteme
9. Revealed Speech and the Sources of Jurisprudence
 
Part Five. Genealogy
10. Canon Law and the Christian Self
11. The Law of Conversion
12. Inner Self, Collective Self, and the Law of the Universal
 
Part Six. Reason
13. Modernist Reason and Shariʿa
14. Law and the Shaping of the Self in Contemporary Europe
15. Islamic Reason
Conclusion
 
Notes
Bibliography
Index