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9 - Natural Law in Islam

from Part III - Natural Law Ethics and Religion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 October 2019

Tom Angier
Affiliation:
University of Cape Town
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Summary

This chapter will introduce the basic, theoretical architecture of competing Islamic natural law theories from the pre-modern period (ninth to fourteenth centuries). Specifically, it will outline juristic debates in the usul al-fiqh genre on reason as a source of law, where revelation is silent. Thereafter it will reflect on a range of doctrinal debates in which many of those same pre-modern jurists came to a legal determination without reference to scriptural (or any other) texts. Drawing on a curious heuristic they labelled huquq Allah and huquq al-ʿibad (the claims of God and the claims of individuals), I will show that despite not invoking (expressly or otherwise) any natural law account of Islamic law, jurists nonetheless developed law based on a mode of rationality that could be called anything from ‘rational’ to ‘common-sense’ to ‘pragmatic’.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

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  • Natural Law in Islam
  • Edited by Tom Angier, University of Cape Town
  • Book: The Cambridge Companion to Natural Law Ethics
  • Online publication: 21 October 2019
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108525077.010
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  • Natural Law in Islam
  • Edited by Tom Angier, University of Cape Town
  • Book: The Cambridge Companion to Natural Law Ethics
  • Online publication: 21 October 2019
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108525077.010
Available formats
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Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Natural Law in Islam
  • Edited by Tom Angier, University of Cape Town
  • Book: The Cambridge Companion to Natural Law Ethics
  • Online publication: 21 October 2019
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108525077.010
Available formats
×