SPEAKING FOR ISLAM SOCIAL, ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL STUDIES OF THE MIDDLE EAST AND ASIA (S.E.P.S.M.E.A.) (Founding editor:C.A.O. van Nieuwenhuijze) Editor REINHARD SCHULZE Advisory Board Dale Eickelman (Dartmouth College) Roger Owen (Harvard University) Judith Tucker (Georgetown University) Yann Richard (Sorbonne Nouvelle) VOLUME 100 SPEAKING FOR ISLAM Religious Authorities in Muslim Societies EDITED BY GUDRUN KRÄMER ANDSABINE SCHMIDTKE LEIDEN •BOSTON 2006 This book is printed on acid-free paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Speaking for Islam : religious authorities in Muslim societies / edited by Gudrun Krämer and Sabine Schmidtke. p. cm. — (social, economic, and political studies of the Middle East and Asia, ISSN 1385-3376 ; v. 100) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-90-04-14949-6 ISBN-10: 90-04-14949-X (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Authority—Religious aspects—Islam. 2. Islamic law—Islamic countries. 3. Scholars, Muslim—Islamic countries. I. Krämer, Gudrun. II. Schmidtke, Sabine. III. Series. BP165.7.S64 2006 297.6—dc22 2006044022 ISSN 1385-3376 ISBN-13: 978-90-04-14949-6 ISBN-10: 90-04-14949-X © Copyright 2006 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Brill provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910 Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. printed in the netherlands CONTENTS List of Contributors .................................................................. vii Introduction: Religious Authority and Religious Authorities in Muslim Societies. A Critical Overview .......................... 1 Gudrun Krämer and Sabine Schmidtke “This day have I perfected your religion for you”: A ¸àhirì Conception of Religious Authority ...................................... 15 Camilla Adang The Epistemology of Excellence: Sunni-Shi'i Dialectics on Legitimate Leadership ............................................................ 49 Asma Afsaruddin The Relationship between Chief Qà∂ì and Chief Dà'ì under the Fatimids ................................................................ 70 Paul E. Walker Forms and Functions of ‘Licences To Transmit’ (Ijàzas) in 18th-Century-Iran: 'Abd Allàh al-Mùsawì al-Jazà"irì al-Tustarì’s (1112–73/1701–59) Ijàza Kabìra ........................ 95 Sabine Schmidtke Asserting Religious Authority in late 19th/early 20th Century Morocco: Mu˙ammad b. Ja'far al-Kattànì (d. 1927) and his Kitàb Salwat al-Anfàs ................................ 128 Bettina Dennerlein Consensus and Religious Authority in Modern Islam: The Discourses of the 'Ulamà" ...................................................... 153 Muhammad Qasim Zaman Drawing Boundaries: Yùsuf al-Qara∂àwì on Apostasy .......... 181 Gudrun Krämer A Doctrine in the Making? Velàyat-e faqìh in Post-Revolutionary Iran ........................................................ 218 Katajun Amirpur vi contents Religious Authority in Transnational Sufi Networks: Shaykh NàΩim al-Qubrusì al-Óaqqànì al-Naqshbandì .................... 241 Annabelle Böttcher The Modern Dede: Changing Parameters for Religious Authority in Contemporary Turkish Alevism ...................... 269 Markus Dressler Index .......................................................................................... 295 LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS Camilla Adang is Senior Lecturer at the Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies at Tel Aviv University. Her fields of specialization include interreligious polemics and classical Islamic religious thought. She is the author of Islam frente a Judaismo. La polémica de Ibn Óazm de Córdoba (Madrid 1994) and Muslim Writers on Judaism and the Hebrew Bible: From Ibn Rabban to Ibn Óazm (Leiden 1996) and is currently preparing a monograph on the creed of Ibn Óazm. Asma Afsaruddin is Associate Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies at the University of Notre Dame. Her fields of specialization are Islamic religious and political thought, Qur"àn and ˙adìth, and Islamic intellectual history. She is the author of Excellence and Precedence. Medieval Islamic Discourse on Legitimate Leadership (Leiden 2002), the editor of Hermeneutics and Honor. Negotiating Female Public Space in Islamic/ate Societes (Cambridge, Mass. 1999) and co-editor of Humanism, Culture and Language in the Near East. Essays in Honor of Georg Krotkoff (Winona Lake, Ind. 1997). Katajun Amirpur teaches at Bonn University and formerly held an Emmy Noether research fellowship. She is specializing in contem- porary Iran, and among her authored books are Die Entpolitisierung des Islam. 'Abdolkarim Sorushs Denken und Wirkung in der Islamischen Republik Iran (Würzburg 2003) and Gott ist mit den Furchtlosen. Schirin Ebadi— Die Friedensnobelpreisträgerin und der Kampf um die Zukunft Irans (Freiburg 2003). Annabelle Böttcher was a research associate at the Institute for Islamic Studies at the Free University of Berlin. She is now working for the International Committee of the Red Cross. Her current research focuses on transnational Islamic (Sufi and Shi'i) networks. Her pub- lications include monographs on official Islam in Syria, Naqshbandi Sufism, female Sufi teaching, the Arab Shi'a and Islam in Germany. Bettina Dennerlein was formerly a research fellow at the Centre of Modern Oriental Studies, Berlin, and is now a research fellow at viii list of contributors the Collaborative Research Centre (Humbolt University, Berlin) devoted to the memory work of former political prisoners in Morocco and Iraq. Her fields of specialization are Islamic law and social his- tory, particularly in Northern Africa. Her published works include Islamisches Recht und sozialer Wandel in Algerien. Zur Entwicklung des Personalstatus seit 1962 (Berlin 1998). She is currently preparing a major research on Islam and political integration in 19th century Morocco. Markus Dressler is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Hofstra University (New York). He has written mainly on Turkish identity politics and especially Alevism. His published works include Die civil religion der Türkei. Kemalistische und alevitische Atatürk-Rezeption im Vergleich (Würzburg 1999) and Die alevitische Religion. Traditionslinien und Neubestim- mungen (Würzburg 2002). Gudrun Krämer is Professor of Islamic Studies at the Free University, Berlin, and member of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences. She has been a visiting professor at the Centre d’Etudes et de Documentation économique, juridique et sociale (CEDEJ) in Cairo; the Institut d’Etudes Politiques (Sciences Po) and the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, both in Paris; the Islamic University in Jakarta, Indonesia; the Max-Weber-Kolleg Erfurt and the School of Advanced International Studies of Johns Hopkins University, Bologna Center. She is a member of the executive editorial board of The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 3rd ed. (in prep.) and has published extensively on Middle Eastern history, Islamic movements and Islamic political thought. Her monographs include Gottes Staat als Republik. Reflexionen zeitgenössischer Muslime zu Islam, Menschenrechten und Demokratie (Baden- Baden 1999), Geschichte Palästinas. Von der osmanischen Eroberung bis zur Gründung des Staates Israel (München 2002), and Geschichte des Islam (München 2005). Sabine Schmidtke is Professor of Islamic Studies at the Free University, Berlin. She is sectional editor (theology & philosophy) of The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 3rd ed. (in prep.) and co-founder and coordinator of the Mu'tazilite Manuscripts Group (est. 2003). She has published exten- sively on Islamic and Jewish intellectual history. Her works include Theologie, Philosophie und Mystik im zwölferschiitischen Islam des 9./15. Jahrhunderts. Die Gedankenwelt des Ibn Abì Jumhùr al-A˙sà"ì (um 838/ list of contributors ix 1434–35—nach 906/1501) (Leiden 2000) and, together with Reza Pourjavady, A Jewish Philosopher of Baghdad. 'Izz al-Dawla Ibn Kammùna and his Writings (Leiden 2006). Paul E. Walker is a historian of ideas with a special interest in Islamic thought. His most recent book is Exploring an Islamic Empire. Fatimid History and Its Sources (London 2002). Previous books include Early Philosophical Shiism (Cambridge 1993), Hamid al-Din al-Kirmani. Ismaili Thought in the Age of al-Hakim (London 1999), and with Wilferd Madelung, An Ismaili Heresiography (Leiden 1998) and The Advent of the Fatimids. A Contemporary Shi'i Witness (London 2000). His translation of Imàm al-Óaramayn al-Juwaynì’s classic manual of Sunni theol- ogy, al-Irshàd (A Guide to Conclusive Proofs for the Principles of Belief), appeared in 2001 (Garnet Publishing). He is currently affiliated with the University of Chicago and is presently finishing a new edition with complete translation of al-Kirmànì’s Lights to Illuminate the Proof of the Imamate (al-Maßàbì˙ fì ithbàt al-imàma). Muhammad Qasim Zaman is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Brown University, who has worked mostly on Islamic religious scholars in the classical and modern periods, both in the Middle East and the Indian Subcontinent. He is the author of The Ulama in Contemporary Islam. Custodians of Change (Princeton 2002) and Religion and Politics under the Early 'Abbasids (Leiden 1997). Among his current projects is a book on internal criticism and religious authority in modern Islam.