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Review Symposium: The Impossible State
In this book, Wael Hallaq at first seems to take aim at Islamist political movements with his claim that "any conception of a modern Islamic state is inherently self-contradictory" (p. ix; emphasis in the original). And indeed, Hallaq does dismiss much of the Islamist project, which he sees as Islamizing society through the state. His book misses the mark a bit in that effort. But that is largely because his true targets are far broader: modernity, the West, and the state--terms that he sees as inextricably linked.
The Impossible State is an audacious book. It is also erudite in its engagement with various bodies of writing and entire disciplines. Should it be interesting to political scientists? I think so, but only in a much more modest way than the author intends.
Hallaq's critique of modernity rests on an essentialism so sweeping that most students of politics will find it unhelpful. But in the process of arguing from essences, he gives a sympathetic view of the Islamic shari'a that will help many appreciate how it has been understood, pursued, and practiced--and why it continues to have appeal even in the midst of a modern state system. In that way, he (unintentionally) provides an extremely brief and limited but useful way to understand the Islamist resurgence.
Let us begin with Hallaq's essentialism. He does use the word "essence" on occasion, but he prefers "paradigmatic" instead: "In our account of paradigm, what is involved is a system of knowledge and practice whose constituent domains share in common a particular structure of concepts that qualitatively distinguish them from other systems of the same species" (p. 8). There, are of course, discordant, irregular, or abnormal elements within any domain, but they subvert the paradigm and are not part of it--and if they ever become dominant, then they form the basis for a new paradigm.
Historical departures from the paradigm do not touch its essence; for the Islamic shari'a, for instance: "The mess of social reality--the victimized child, the robbed trader, the overtaxed peasant--could always rely on a hegemonic moral system that did its best to address the reality. That it was not always successful is a fact...