Adnan Ahmad Zulfiqar

Bio: Adnan Ahmad Zulfiqar is an academic researcher. The author has contributed to research in topics: Sharia. The author has an hindex of 1, co-authored 1 publications receiving 13 citations.

Collective Duties (Fard Kifāya) in Islamic Law: The Moral Community, State Authority and Ethical Speculation in the Premodern Period

Abstract: This dissertation studies a unique subset of legal obligations in Islamic law known as “collective duties” (farḍ kifāya) and focuses on juristic writing in the premodern period between the 9th and 14th centuries C.E. Together with the more widely recognized “individual obligations” (farḍ ʿayn), these duties encompass the complete range of mandated behavior in Islamic law. Individual obligations follow a simple pattern: one person is assigned responsibility for performing a particular act and is solely held responsible if they fail to do so. Collective duties are premised on a different concept involving shared responsibility for required acts. They are based on a formula consisting of two clauses, which loosely draws from a Qurʾānic prooftext. The first clause states that as long as some people perform the duty, then the obligation is suspended for everyone else. While everyone initially carries the burden, they are not all required to perform. However, the second clause adds an important warning: if no one performs the duty, then everyone is held accountable. This study explores the juristic discourse on collective duties in order to better understand how they function, what purpose they serve and why they might have been created. As premodern jurists explored the implications of collective duties as a whole, they developed the theoretical outlines of a kifāya-doctrine, one that asked questions of whether collective duties were preferred to individual obligations, who in the collective was required to perform and when an obligation was suspended. Beyond the general doctrine, the dissertation also examines legal rules developed for three specific collective duties: jihād, funerary rites and duties to rescue. The discourse on these duties demonstrates how jurists not only provided practical guidance for performance of the obligation, but also thought more broadly about the theoretical implications for law. In the process, they began to determine who belongs in the moral community, defined a robust role for the state in law’s implementation and speculated on what should constitute ethical behavior. As a result, they made clear that the normative universe of obligation is essential to understanding the Islamic legal tradition. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations First Advisor Joseph E. Lowry

Law's Empire

Abstract: Scholars of culture, humanities and social sciences have increasingly come to an appreciation of the importance of the legal domain in social life, while critically engaged socio-legal scholars around the world have taken up the task of understanding "Law's Empire" in all of its cultural, political, and economic dimensions. The questions arising from these intersections, and addressing imperialisms past and present forms the subject matter of a special symposium issue of Social Identities under the editorship of Griffith University's Rob McQueen, and UBC's Wes Pue and with contributions from McQueen, Ian Duncanson, Renisa Mawani, David Williams, Emma Cunliffe, Chidi Oguamanam, W. Wesley Pue, Fatou Camara, and Dianne Kirkby. This paper introduces the volume, forthcoming in late 2007. The central problematique of this issue has previously been explored through the 2005 Law's Empire conference, an informal but vibrant postcolonial legal studies network.

God's Rule: Government and Islam

Abstract: God's Rule: Government and Islam, by Patricia Crone. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004. x + 400 pages. Charts to p. 413. Bibl. to p. 446. Index and gloss, to p. 462. $39.50. For many Muslim believers, it is an article of faith that religion and politics are fused. Patricia Crone accepts this doctrine and begins her new book by firmly grounding Islam in a Middle Eastern tradition of religious and political unity. The two examples she uses as evidence are the Sumerian city-states with their priest-rulers and "the federation of Israelites that Moses took out of Egypt for the conquest of Palestine" (p. 15). These examples are perhaps not the best choices since archaeologists have discovered military strongmen as well as priests among the earliest rulers in Sumeria. They also tell us of early popular assemblies (pukhrum), indicating that Iraq (!) and not Greece was the place displaying the earliest traces of participatory politics.1 As for the Israelites, many archaeologists are skeptical of the historicity of the Exodus and are inclined to regard the ancient Israelites as villagers of long standing in the Palestinian hills.2 In the case of Islamic origins as well, the scholarship of the past quarter century - in which Dr. Crone occupies a prominent position has cast doubts on the historicity of early 7lh-century events in Arabia as told by the 9lh-century religious scholars. While Islamic theology and law may posit a unity of religion and politics, historical research demonstrates their distinctiveness - more often in tension than in harmony. Apart from the initial fusion argument, the book is a masterpiece on the history of the tension existing between religion and politics during the formative period of Islamic civilization (7'h to 13th centuries C.E.). It begins with a discussion of the Umayyad caliphs, governors, and judges who ruled the expanding Islamic Empire in the early 70Os by religious as well as political decree. From the start, however, these rulers had to deal with critics, such as the Kharijis, Jama'i Muslims, and Shi'is, who advocated rival models of religio-political organization under either weaker or stronger caliphs. Crone coins the felicitous term jama'i (p. 28) to describe those early "communitarian" (later Sunni) Muslims who were critical of Umayyad religious functions but did not seek to overturn Umayyad rule. While admittedly the Kharijis and Shi'is espoused religio-political fusion, the very fact of their active hostility shows the unavoidable tensions between religion and politics in the historical process. Crone convincingly argues that Shi'ism in the mid-700s was still more generally Hashimite (family of the Prophet) than 'Alid (family of the Prophet's cousin 'AH) in orientation. Consequently, the 'Abbasid revolution of 750 appears as a victory for the Shi'i model of a strong caliphate, especially in religious matters. …

The Succession to Muhammad: A Study of the Early Caliphate

Abstract: The Succession to Muhammad: A Study of the Early Caliphate, by Wilferd Madelung. Cambridge, NY and Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1997. xviii + 387 pages. Bibl. to p. 393. Index to p. 413. $69.95. Reviewed by Elton L. Daniel This erudite, complex, and fascinating book reexamines the struggle over and for the office of caliph, primarily during the period from the death of the Prophet Muhammad to that of his grandson al-Hasan bin `Ali bin Abi Talib (632-670 AD). As the author notes, "no event in history has divided Islam more profoundly and durably than the succession to Muhammad" (p. I), and the publisher's blurb predicts that this book will "rekindle the debate" over this topic. Since this debate has never really waned among Muslims (nor, it would seem, among Orientalists), "rekindle" might be a polite circumlocution for "fan the flames." This could have become the kind of history Paul Valery had in mind when he complained that "it inebriates nations, saddles them with false memories, exaggerates their defects, keeps their old sores running, torments them, and induces in them megalomania and the mania of persecution." 1 Fortunately such fears turn out to be unwarranted. Wilferd Madelung, a careful and judicious scholar, handles the discussion with great skill and authority. This is not to say that he does not have an axe to grind. If the debate over the succession to Muhammad has been a long one, it has also been decidedly lopsided. Madelung is out to balance the scales by taking to task both "early Sunnite tendentious historiography" (p. 1) of the type represented by Sayf bin `Umar (whose attempted rehabilitation by recent scholars the author rejects) and the hypercritical but de facto biased orthodoxy of Arabists from Henri Lammens and Leone Caetani to Moshe Sharon. Madelung offers many fresh interpretations of such familiar problems as the accession of the caliph Abu Bakr, the shura (the deliberations which led to the election of `Uthman bin 'Affan as caliph), the murder of `Uthman, the caliphate of `Ali bin Abi Talib, and the intra-Muslim conflicts from the Battle of the Camel in 656 AD to the assassination of `Ali in 661 AD. These are not easy to summarize but tend to be framed by two overarching ideas. First, religious Shi'ism, with its exaltation of the 12 Imams (religious leaders and descendants of `All), may have been a relatively late phenomenon, but political Shi`ism, based on concepts of the authority of the Prophet's family, was an authentic development of the earliest period reflected in both the Quran and the Sunna (tradition). Second, the struggle between political Shi`ism and its enemies was also a struggle between an other-worldly idealism and an all too worldly realpolitik in which, not surprisingly, realpolitik won hands down. At first, with Abu Bakr and 'Umar bin al-Khattab, the systematic diffusion of authority among Quraysh and thence to the Umayyads rather than its concentration among the Banu Hashim may have been motivated by pragmatism and looked much like meritocracy, but by 'Uthman's time it was a vehicle for the despotism of ruthless and unscrupulous men. …