In Reasoning with God, renowned Islamic scholar Khaled Abou El Fadl explains not only what Shari'ah really means but also the way it can revitalize and reengage contemporary Islam. After an essential overview of Shari'ah, Abou El Fadl explores the moral trajectory of Islam in today's world. Weaving powerful personal stories with broader global examples, he shows the ways that some interpretations of Islam today have undermined its potential for peace and love. Rather than simply outlining challenges, however, the author provides constructive suggestions about how Muslims can reengage the ethical tradition of their faith through Shari'ah. Reasoning with God takes readers-both Muslim and non-Muslim-beyond superficial understandings of Shari'ah to a deeper understanding of its meaning and potential.
KHALED ABOU EL FADL is the Omar and Azmeralda Alfi Distinguished Professor in Islamic Law at the University of California, Los Angeles, School of Law, where he is also chair of the Islamic Studies program. He received the University of Oslo Human Rights Award, was named a Carnegie Scholar in Islamic Law, and has served on the board of directors for Human Rights Watch, among other honors. He is the author of numerous books, including The Great Theft and The Search for Beauty in Islam.
This book is not an attempt to explain or communicate my Islamic faith. However, I do write from an internal perspective to the Islamic faith. I write as someone who cares about the current Muslim condition and the future of Muslims and Islam. This book is not some self-flagellating record of my struggles and disappointments with the Islamic faith. It is, however, an attempt to come to terms with the moral trajectory of the Islamic tradition in the contemporary age. In theological terms, this book is an effort to discharge the moral obligation that I shoulder as an intellectual and as a Muslim to bear witness for God for the sake of justice and to justice for the sake of God.This book is but an attempt to reason with the divine about all that is divine, including humanity, justice, love, and beauty. Reasoning with God is a search for the path to God and from God to all that divinity incorporates and encapsulates, including goodness, well-being, and virtue. In a word, this book is about the Shari'ah as the law of the Creator and the laws of creation, from their primordial and immutable essence to their contingent and temporal manifestations.
The purpose of this chapter is to provide a basic and straightforward introduction to the rather amorphous system that we call Islamic law. This book is about reasoning with God about God's law in the Islamic context, and so, throughout, there are repeated references to Shari'ah and Islamic law without these terms being synonymous or interchangeable. In the course of the arguments made in this book, I propose different ways in which the role and nature of Islamic law ought to be understood, and I have done my best wherever necessary to offer the reader functional reminders of the meaning of the various Arabic terms associated with the Islamic legal experience. Ultimately, however, for a variety of reasons, I decided to start out the book with what might be described as the indispensable guide to basic Islamic law. The brief introduction below is intended to help provide readers without any background in the Islamic legal system with a quick crash course in the subject. This will much better enable readers to follow the arguments made in this book. At the same time, Shari'ah law has been the subject of so many mischaracterizations and stereotyping that it has become necessary to simply get the facts straight. Many discourses on the subject remain captive to either hallucinatory mythology often spurred on by xenophobia or bigotry or to stale apologetics that grow out of misguided false pride or, quite often, condescending tolerance. But even to serious students of Islamic law, this introduction can serve as quick review of basic concepts and categories of Shari'ah and Islamic law. I should note, however, that while this brief synopsis of the Islamic legal system helps serve as an important orientation to the rest of the book, it is intended to stand alone and can be omitted without interrupting the flow of narrative. As a scholastic and faith-based engagement with the meaning and consequences of Shari'ah, this book really begins with the following chapter. The book is akin to a journey through Islamic theology, law, and history-it is a journey through the Muslim past and present and so this prologue is not the journey, but it could very well be the provisions needed for a meaningful trip.
**Contents and Sample Pages**
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