Sufis and Sharīʿa: The Forgotten School of Mercy

394 Pages·2022·4.628 MB·English

by  Samer Dajani

SUFIS AND SHAR ʿA
Ī
The Forgotten School of Mercy
Samer Dajani
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© Samer Dajani, 2023
Cover image: Schools Leading to Paradise image courtesy of the author’s collection.
Cover design: Andrew McColm
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CONTENTS
Acknowledgements vi
Introduction: The Sufis and Legal Theory 1
The Sufis and Uṣūl al-Fiqh 2
Part 1 Mysticism, Traditionalism and the School of Mercy
1 The Schools of Law 11
Ijtihād and the Science of Legal Theory 11
Ḥadīth versus Sunna 15
Rationalists versus Traditionalists 19
The Traditionist-Jurisprudents 25
The Great Synthesis and the Four Madhhabs 29
The Ẓāhirīs 31
2 Sufis and Traditionalism 39
Sufis and Fiqh 43
Affinities between the Mystics and Traditionalists 47
Conceptions of Sainthood among the Traditionalist Movement 49
The Mystics and the Schools 53
3 Al-Tirmidhī’s Critique of Rationalism 68
A Brief Sketch of Tirmidhī’s Life and Intellectual Upbringing 68
Tirmidhī and Jurisprudence 70
Ḥikma: The Spiritual Wisdom behind the Divine Prescriptions 71
Tirmidhī’s Conception of Ijtihād 78
iv | sufis and sharīʿa
The Law is Mercy 90
Conclusion 93
4 Ibn ʿArabī’s Traditionalism 100
The Life of Ibn ʿArabī 101
The Intellectual Environment in Andalusia 101
The Influence of Eastern Mystics and Sufis 112
Mysticism, Traditions and Traditionalism 115
Ibn ʿArabī and the Works of Ibn Ḥazm 120
5 The Akbarī Madhhab: Ibn ʿArabī’s School of Mercy 129
Ibn ʿArabī and Ẓahirism 130
Original Licitness and the Ease Principle 136
Divine Pardon and Mercy 141
Ibn ʿArabī’s Position on Ijtihād 143
Taqlīd, Pluralism and God’s Mercy 150
Summary 156
Did Ibn ʿArabī Have his Own Madhhab? 157
6 Loyalty to the Akbarī Way: ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Shaʿrānī 167
ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Shaʿrānī 170
Shaʿrānī’s Writings on Ibn ʿArabī 171
The Removal of the Fog 177
Part 2 Mercy in Flexibility: A Path for All Mankind
7 The All-comprehensive Nature of the Sharīʿa: From
Tirmidhī to Suyūṭī 187
The Early Concept of Leeway 189
The Position of the Four Madhhabs 191
Ibn Ḥanbal and the Traditionalists 192
Al-Ḥakīm al-Tirmidhī 193
Ibn ʿArabī 196
Taqī al-Dīn al-Subkī 199
Al-Suyūṭī 201
Difference of Perspective 203
8 The ‘Scale’ of ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Shaʿrānī 213
The Scale 214
contents | v
The Sufi Ideas Underlying the Theory 218
The Concept of Leeway versus the Concept of Abrogation 223
Shaʿrānī’s Defence of the Madhhabs 227
Why Shaʿrānī Wrote the Mīzān 237
The Problem of Talfīq 244
Part 3 The Akbarī Madhhab in Practice and its Influence
on the Modern World
9 Aḥmad ibn Idrīs and the Implementation of Ibn ʿArabī’s
Jurisprudence in the Nineteenth Century 253
The Importance of Aḥmad ibn Idrīs 254
His Education 254
Ibn Idrīs as Teacher 257
Ibn Idrīs as Heir to Ibn ʿArabī 258
Ibn Idrīs’s Study of the Jurisprudential Sections of the Futūḥāt 262
Conclusion 273
10 The Teachings and Influence of Aḥmad ibn Idrīs 280
The Teachings of Ibn Idrīs on Ijtihād 280
The Idrīsī Tradition and Beyond 288
Conclusion 298
11 From Ibn ʿArabī to the Salafīs 301
The Hijaz Revival 301
Shah Walī-Allāh and the Indian Ahl-i Hadith Movement 305
The Iraqi and Moroccan Revivalists 312
The Damascene Salafiyya 315
Maḥmūd Khaṭṭāb al-Subkī’s al-Jamʿiyya al-Sharʿiyya 321
Conclusion: The Spirit of the Law – Competing Visions 332
Appendix: The Classical Juristic Debate on Whether Every
Mujtahid was Correct 343
References 352
Index 372
ACkNOwlEDgEmENTS
My deepest gratitude goes first and foremost to my parents for the boundless
support they gave me while working on this project, and for their belief in the
value of this work. Secondly I cannot thank my wife Nishat enough, not only
for her constant moral support, but also for all the hours she put into review-
ing and improving this work in its multiple iterations. A big thank you to my
sister Dina for encouraging me to reach the finish line. My heartfelt thanks to
my parents-in-law for their continuous support and encouragement. Thank
you to Cambridge Muslim College who awarded me a Fellowship to work
on this project. The city, the college, the staff, students and my colleagues
made that year one of the most peaceful and beloved years of my life. I want
to specifically thank my CMC colleagues Ramon Harvey and Harith Bin
Ramli for the many fruitful conversations we had. After my Fellowship at
CMC ended I carried on my work at another blissful institution, Mei Leaf
teahouse in Camden Town, where my thoughts were fuelled by the best tea
in London. I want to thank, too, my PhD supervisor Dr Ayman Shihadeh,
who is the model academic and who taught me to analyse things at a deeper
level, leading to great insights. Dr Timothy Winter and Dr Kazuyo Murata
gave me very helpful comments on the earliest version of this work, while
the two anonymous reviewers gave helpful feedback on its last recension. My
dear friend Ömer Faruk Yeni supplied me with scans of different manuscripts
from Istanbul’s libraries over the years. Shaykh Ashraf Makkawi of the Azhar
vi
acknowledgements | vii
allowed me to visit his home on a daily basis so he could explain to me the
difficult chapter on ṭaswīb al-mujtahidīn from Ghazālī’s al-Mustaṣfā (which
is summarised in the Appendix). He not only gave from his time until we
finished the whole chapter, but also cooked me food himself and enriched
me through his company in so many ways. Not only do I think he is one
of the greatest intellectual giants of the Muslim world today, but also one
of the most noble human beings I have had the honour to meet. As I attended
the lectures of Dr Akram Nadwi over the years, I was often taken aback by the
congruence of so many of his teachings with the material I was writing about
in this book. Sometimes the way he explained certain concepts helped me
explain the material I am presenting here more clearly. I am very fortunate to
be publishing this work with EUP, whose team has been so supportive and
brilliant to work with, and who gave my manuscript to the best copy-editor I
could ask for, Nina Macaraig. To all of the above and to so many others who
I have not mentioned by name, I am truly thankful.

INTrODUCTION
ThE SUFIS AND lEgAl ThEOry
I
slamic legal theory provides the framework for the production of the laws,
both spiritual and legal, that govern the lives of Muslims all over the world.
For example, a Muslim woman planning a trip to America would have to
consider a number of issues such as: 1) is she allowed to travel all by her-
self, 2) can she perform her prayers on the airplane while seated, or 3) if she
finds herself in a restaurant in Louisiana, can she order Cajun Fried Alligator?
The answers to all these questions, and a multitude of others, depend on
the legal methodology that she follows. But the importance of legal theory
goes far beyond that. All scholars’ legal principles are, consciously or uncon-
sciously, built upon a foundation. This foundation is a set of assumptions
about the very nature of the sharīʿa itself, and if we go further, each scholar’s
assumptions about the nature of the sharīʿa go back to his or her beliefs about
God and God’s intention and purpose in creating the sharīʿa. Each group’s
beliefs about the nature of God and His attributes – whether they saw God
as primarily merciful or not, gentle or harsh, whether He prioritised justice
or forgiveness – shaped their view of the purpose of the sharīʿa and its inner
workings. Each scholar’s set of legal principles, then, was not simply a way
to find out what God and His Messenger were telling us through Revela-
tion: they were also competing visions about the very heart and soul of Islam.
The different legal theories that are proposed involve answers to questions
such as: is the sharīʿa rigid or flexible? Does it accept diversity or insist on
1
2 | sufis and sharīʿa
uniformity? How much does it interfere in people’s lives, and how much scope
for freedom does it allow? Is it only there as a test of obedience, or does it serve
a function? We will look at all of these questions as we explore the different
legal theories of the major Sunni imāms and a number of the most important
Sufis in Islamic history.
The Sufis and U ūl al-fiqh
Sufis have a long history of contributing to the science of uṣūl al-fiqh. One
need only mention al-Ghazālī whose work al-Mustaṣfā, thought to be the
last book he penned before his death, became the basis of most future works
in the field. Soon after Ghazālī, in fact, the majority of Sunni scholars
would become affiliated with a Sufi path, and many of those who wrote
works of uṣūl were very much practising Sufis. However, when they wrote
in this field, they put on their jurisprudent (uṣūlī) hats, writing strictly as
jurisprudents, for scholars at the time wore many hats but rarely mixed fields
in their writings. Works of legal theory, fiqh manuals, theological books and
the like all became standardised, and Sufi ideas rarely showed themselves in
such works. If a jurisprudent like Ghazālī was to wear more than one hat
when writing on legal theory (and he did), then his other main hat would
have been that of the theologian, for there had always been a very strong
connection between the sciences of theology and legal theory. Theological
doctrine was often hiding under the surface of many legal discussions, and
this is the reason, often unnoticed, behind many of the different positions
of the madhhabs on legal theory.1 In fact, a non-specialist going through
works of legal theory would be surprised to see that almost all the authorities
mentioned in these works are more famous as theologians rather than as
jurists and that the names of theologians even from the extinct and (from
the Sunni point of view) un-orthodox Muʿtazilī sect were regularly invoked.
One of the main reasons for the connection between theology and legal
theory is their shared concerns, such as epistemology, as well as the theological
implications of holding certain legal doctrines. For example, are God’s rulings
based on a wisdom, and does that mean God had to make certain rulings in
keeping with that wisdom?2 When the science of legal theory was in its earliest
stages, jurists were often unaware of the theological implications of their legal
doctrines, and consequently there existed a great variety of opinions within