Islam without Extremes: A Muslim Case for Liberty (42 page)

6.
Michael Cooperson,
Classical Arabic Biography: The Heirs of the Prophets in the Age of Al-Mamun
(Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 112.

7.
The Arabic principle is “al-asl fi-l-ashiya al-ibaha.” Ramadan,
Radical Reform
, p. 89.

8.
David de Santillana, “Law and Society,” in
The Legacy of Islam
, ed. T. Arnold and A. Guillaume (London: Oxford University Press, 1931), pp. 295–99; quoted in Marshall G. S. Hodgson,
The Venture of Islam
, vol. 2,
The Expansion of Islam in the Middle Periods
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977), p. 352 (footnote).

9.
An article on an Islamist website has the title: “The Messenger Muhammad . . . Is Our Example”Did He Ever Vote?” It argues: “Only actions based upon the Shar‘iah are accepted by Allah . . . , and certainly the Messenger Muhammad . . . never voted for anyone in the Quraish parliament in his time.”
http://www.islamic-truth.co.uk/islamicstore/pdf_files/Did_SAAW_vote.pdf
.

10.
Melchert, “The Adversaries of Ahmad Ibn Hanbal,”
pp. 248–49.

11.
Küng,
Islam
, p. 273.

12.
Hasan Hanefi, “Geleneksel Islam Düsüncesindeki Otoriteryenligin Epistemolojik, Ontolojik, Ahlaki, Siyasi ve Tarihi Kökenleri Üzerine” [On the Epistemological, Ontological, Moral, Political, and Historical Sources of Authoritarianism in Traditional Islamic Thought], trans. Ilhami Güler, Islamiyat 2, no. 22 (April–June 1999): 34.

13.
Beytullah Çetiner, “Hüküm Vermede Hadisin Kullanılısı” [The Use of Hadith in Jurisprudence],
Anadolu
4, no. 4 (Winter 1994).

14.
Suleiman Ali Mourad,
Early Islam Between Myth and History: al-Hasan al-Basri (d. 110AH/728CE) and the Formation of His Legacy in Classical Islamic Scholarship
(Leiden: Brill, 2006), p. 163.

15.
Qur’an 18:110, Shakir translation.

16.
Qur’an 11:31, Shakir translation.

17.
Küng,
Islam
, p. 222.

18.
John Kelsay, “Divine Command Ethics in Early Islam: Al-shafi’i and the Problem of Guidance,”
The Journal of Religious Ethics
22, no. 1 (Spring 1994): 110.

19.
For a critique of the theory of abrogation, and the argument that no Qur’anic verse is in fact abrogated, see Abdulaziz A. Sachedina,
The Prolegomena to the Qur’an
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 186–248.

20.
Rodinson,
Islam and Capitalism
, pp. 138, 137.

21.
Schacht,
Introduction to Islamic Law
, p. 35.

22.
Lewis,
The Middle East
, p. 210.

23.
Hodgson,
Venture of Islam
, vol. 1, pp. 342–43.

24.
Qur’an 20:115–121.

25.
See Fatima Mernissi,
The Veil and the Male Elite: A Feminist Interpretation of Women’s Rights in Islam
(New York: Basic Books, 1992); Hidayet Sefkatli Tuksal,
Kadın Karsıtı Söylemin
Islam Gelene
gindeki
Izdü
sümleri
[The Impact of Misogynist Rhetoric in Islamic Tradition] (Ankara: Kitâbiyat, 2001).

26.
Hourani,
History of the Arab Peoples
, p. 56.

27.
W. Montgomery Watt,
Freewill and Predestination in Early Islam
(London: Luzac and Co., 1948), pp. 17–30.

28.
Mohammad Omar Farooq, “Riba, Interest and Six Hadiths: Do We Have a Definition or a Conundrum?,”
Review of Islamic Economics
13, no. 1 (2009): 105.

29.
Timur Kuran, professor of economics and Islamic studies at Duke University, notes: “Starting around the tenth century, Islamic legal institutions, which had benefitted the Middle Eastern economy in the early centuries of Islam, began to act as a drag on development by slowing or blocking the emergence of central features of modern economic life”including private capital accumulation, corporations, large-scale production, and impersonal exchange.” Timur Kuran,
The Long Divergence: How Islamic Law Held Back the Middle East
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010).

30.
See Friedmann,
Tolerance and Coercion in Islam
, pp. 197–98; Bat Ye’or, “Jews and Christians under Islam: Dhimmitude and Marcionism,” published in French as “Juifs et chrétiens sous l’islam: Dhimmitude et marcionisme,” by Bat Ye’or,
Commentaire
, no. 97 (Spring 2002). (Translation available at
http://www.dhimmitude.org/archive/by_dhimmitude_marcionism_en.pdf
.) Duncan B. MacDonald also notes: “The harsher views developed by western Muslims, and especially by the theologians of Spain, were due, on the other hand, to Augustinian and Roman influence.” Duncan B. MacDonald,
Development of Muslim Theology, Jurisprudence and Constitutional Theory
(New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1903), p. 132.

31.
Afsaruddin,
First Muslims
, p. 116.

32.
Ann K. S. Lambton, “A Nineteenth Century View of Jihad,”
Studia Islamica
32 (1970), p. 181.

33.
“The conflicting Qur’anic verses cannot prove an evolution of the concept or sanction for religiously authorized warring in Islam from a nonaggressive to a militant stance. To suggest that they do is nothing more than an interpretation.” Reuven Firestone,
Jihad: The Origin of Holy War in Islam
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 64.

34.
Afsaruddin,
First Muslims
, p. 118.

35.
Ibid.

36.
Martin et al.,
Defenders of Reason in Islam
, p. 15.

37.
Lyons,
House of Wisdom
, p. 77.

38.
Karabell,
People of the Book
, p. 48.

39.
Cooperson,
Classical Arabic Biography
, pp. 34, 39.

40.
That comment is by Josef van Ess, who has been cited as “the world’s most distinguished scholar of classical Islamic philosophy.” See Josef van Ess,
The Flowering of Muslim Theology
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006), p. 5.

41.
This interpretation is suggested by Nimrod Hurvitz in “Mihna as Self-Defense,”
Studia Islamica
92 (2001), pp. 93–111. Here, Hurvitz argues that the winners of the Mutazilite-Traditionist confrontation, i.e., the latter camp, wrote its history and showed itself as the persecuted victim, whereas a closer reading reveals that the situation was much more complex: “Despite the centrality of the Hanbali-Sunni narrative and its posthumous victory, it was not the sole historiographic trend among Muslims who wrote about the
mihna
. The
mutakallimun
[Mutazilite theologians] viewed this event differently and their writings give vent to their interpretation. Their emphasis was on the missing piece of the Hanbali-Sunni narrative: its historic background. They did not see the
mihna
as the outcome of court intrigue nor did they emphasize the initiative of any single individual. Rather, they focused on wider intellectual and political developments such as inter-factional strife among the ‘
ulama
. They maintained that during the decades that preceded the
mihna
, the
mutakallimun
and
muhaddithun
[People of the Hadith] jockeyed for power. In the course of this struggle the
muhaddithun
succeeded in landing a sequence of hard blows on the
mutakallimun
. After al-Ma’mun came to power and extended his support to the
mutakallimun
, the pendulum of power swung in their favor and it was their chance to strike at the
muhaddithun
. Such a narrative implies that the
mutakallimun
were not the original aggressors but rather the victims of the
muhaddithun
. . . . It is the
mihna
that enabled the
mutakallimun
to raise their heads, speak their minds and establish themselves in their proper role in society. Such justice could come about only after the
mihna
reversed the power relations between the previously persecuted
mutakallimun
and their oppressors, the anthropomorphists. It was only when the
muhaddithun
’s scare tactics collided with the more powerful imperial apparatus, that they changed their behavior and in some cases fostered a respectable debate with the
mutakallimun
.” (pp. 95–96, 100)

42.
S. M. Deen,
Science Under Islam: Rise, Decline and Revival
(www.lulu.com, 2007), p. 121.