The End of Critical Islam?

Abstract

AbstractIn his famed Muqaddima, the 14th-century historiographer Ibn Khaldūn claimed that the science of disputation had become neglected in his time. Engaging in disputation was now merely optional for the jurist, rather than being integral to his practice. Chapter 7 asks why the importance of disputation diminished in Islamic legal culture. Focusing on the Shāfiʿī school in late 11th-century Khurasan, the chapter identifies the emergence of a deep pessimism about the capacity of jurists to perform ijtihād. By the 13th century, this outlook had become widespread and eventually gave rise to al-Nawawī’s reimagining of Shāfiʿī school history as one of gradual decay in the practice of ijtihād. The ascendance of al-Nawawī’s view marked a rupture with a previous era in which Shāfiʿīs championed equal responsibility of all jurists to seek out God’s law themselves. As a prominent classical jurist himself realized, to diminish the individual responsibility of ijtihād was to undercut the disputation’s very raison d’être.