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oa Authority in Islam: The Institutionalization of Islam and the Elusive Transfer of Authority from Society to State
- Source: Journal of Georgetown University-Qatar Middle Eastern Studies Student Association, Volume 2015, Issue 1, مارس ٢٠١٥, 2
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- ١٣ يناير ٢٠١٥
- ٠١ مارس ٢٠١٥
- ١٨ مارس ٢٠١٥
ملخص
Islam is not merely a religion; it expands beyond that to include almost everything. Politics and Islam have always had a fickle relationship, yet a somewhat more stable one in the past. This was due mainly to the fact that Islam existed as an underlying foundation to societal life and basic political interactions;1 today, things have developed in such a manner that Islam has been institutionalized into either state-inclusive bodies that exist on a political bargain or de-facto opposition basis, or criminal groups that are deemed to be enemies of the state. Islam as an all-inclusive way of life for people is now merely a reflection of whatever these new Islamic institutions dictate. The way in which these Islamic institutions came into existence and their political relationship with the state presents us with a very interesting yet “locked” paradigm of existence, whereby a huge gap forms between the state and society. In order to understand how this paradigm came into being, this paper will go through the process of explaining and analyzing the different groups, mechanisms and structures that changed the application of Islam in the Middle East. Using the work of Anwar Majid's Freedom and Orthodoxy as a theoretical framework, the paper will first examine the rise of the Ulama class and their role in the process of Islamic state institutionalization. The paper will then move on to show how Islamic legal authority was transferred from society and given to the state, with the Ulama class being the new keepers of this authority, and how the colonial encroachment of Western laws was the vehicle of this transfer. That is not to say that pre-colonial Islamic societies were model ones and that colonialism is the direct cause of this transfer. Finally, the paper will examine the process