Content area
Full Text
The Landscape of Religious Reform: Continuity and Change
The work of Mufti Muhammad Taqi eUsmam', who has served on both the Shari'a Appellate Branch of Pakistan's Supreme Court (1982-2002) and the Federal Shari'a Court of Pakistan (1980-82), sits at a nexus of transformations within contemporary discursive traditions of reform (islab) in Islam. The question of reforming Islam - and in particular Islamic Shari'a law - has shaped public discourses among Muslim intellectuals, scholars, religious leaders, and political authorities since the 19th century. In the late decades of that era, the terms secularist, modernist, and traditionalist gained currency as descriptors of the major rival groups seeking to articulate Islam on the stage of public opinion. Yet then, as today, these terms often mislead more than they enlighten, especially insofar as they ignore the common ground on which members of each group stand.2 Perhaps more so within the past four decades, political, socio-economic, and technological developments have significantly altered the landscape of religious authority in Muslim societies, and expanded the ranks of those claiming to represent Islam. Notably, these developments include the involvement of state actors in Islamization programs (even ostensibly "secular" states) and their concomitant sponsorship and co-optation (or curbing) of dini madaris' education; the spread of radical Islamist ideologies and the expansion of groups that uphold them; and the emergence of Muslim civic groups.4 They also encompass the migration of Muslims from "emerging market" nations (e.g. Pakistan, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Morocco, and Turkey) to more prosperous regions in the West (Western Europe, the U.S., Canada, and Australia), the Middle East (the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait), and Southeast Asia (Singapore, Malaysia, Brunei); and reflect the emergence of what Dale Eickelman and James Piscatori have called the "new religious intellectuals" from state or secular educational institutions.5
In the case of Pakistan, these developments have underscored the ways in which religious authorities, and consequently movements for reform, have engaged in an ongoing process of reconstruction, altering both the meanings, and the symbolic capital of the 'Ulama3. Within this process, Mufti TJsmani stands as a member of the growing numbers of influential 'Ulama3 who have emerged from the South Asian Subcontinent as major players on the global stage of opinion articulating the practical application of Islamic...