Part 2: the Modernising Muftis in Ottoman Turkey and its Empire (and Successor States)

Just a reminder: Mufti is the name given to a person considered legally qualified within Islamic legal traditions to issue legal opinions (note: a fatwa (legal opinion) is simply the Arabic name given to a legal opinion so not all fatwas (the plural is actually fatawa in Arabic) are death warrants). This and the next few posts as well as the last two describe a variety of current and recent Islamic legal and political models used by Muslims in some sort of position to have political influence. My use of different categories is somewhat arbitrary; it just helps shorten the posts somewhat. So there will be some overlap. Later I will also discuss the recent and current ideas of secular and non-Muslim Arabs, Iranians, Turks and others and then how both of these types of ideas (Muslim and other) have played out in more recent Middle Eastern history.

For now though, I'll return to the modernising Islamic thinkers. Periodically, thinkers in the Arab and Islamic world have considered that the law required reform, contrary to an often expressed view in the West that 'true' Muslims are all atavistic legal traditionists seeking a return to some immutable Sharia. Naturally, when the basis of the law is an understanding of religion, the law is expected to be morally sound and as mentioned in earlier posts circumstances may change the way laws affect people. Hence logically laws must occasionally be revised. Also, the law that Islamic societies and scholars created from the start weren’t necessarily good Islamic law. Fatima Mernissi, the Moroccan scholar, has forcefully argued that, from the start, there was legal backsliding by the patriarchal tribal society.

The Islamic State has usually codified very little, as a tradition. It has rather published collections of fatawa. Some Islamic scholars as a result do question the right of the State to make revisions to the law in Islamic majority countries (at least without the approval of Islamic scholars). But they would say that, wouldn’t they, as the writers of the fatawa? Suleiman the Magnificent (or Qanuni – the law giver – in Arabic) compiled collections of the fatawa of some muftis and this was seen as legislating legitimately within the Islamic tradition in which genuine scholarship had apparently declined. The Turkish legal reforms have subsequently been adopted by successor states such as Syria, Lebanon and Iraq. Religious courts were basically relegated to resolving questions of family law with the advent of secular courts dealing with all other matters from the 19^th Century. The law thus made is now largely codified in Arab and Muslim countries as a result of the modernising fatawa of muftis. The call for Sharia Law from those Muslims who call for it may be seen as a reaction to this modern style of codified law-making and the limitation of the power of religious courts (all approved by the modernising Muftis). Under the influence of the West, many scholars at Islamic universities such as al-Azhar also graduate in law from Western-based universities these days.

The role of scholars qualified to pronounce fatawa (muftis) continued into the modern reforming world, however, and, as we know, in Iran, the grand Muftis, often called Ayatollahs, now reign supreme. At the other end of a long spectrum, the Turkish government of the 20^th Century has typically been positively anti-Islamic-rule. Muftis have typically been government agents in the Islamic world subordinate to the local ruler. ‘Abd al-Razzaq al-Sanhuri (1895 – 1971) from Egypt and Mustafa al-Zarqa (1904 – 1999) from Syria are two notable reformist muftis from the recent modern period who made reform on behalf of their governments.