Renewal of Religious Sciences (Al-Alwani on Al-Jazeera)

Last night, I watched the episode of Al-Shari`a wa Al-Hayah with Dr. Taha Jaber Al-Alwani. The episode was most interesting, focusing on the need to review the content and methodology of religious sciences. Dr. Al-Alwani's main aim was to show that the fields of knowledge known variously as religious sciences, Islamic sciences, or canon-based sciences (العلوم النقلية) are in-fact mostly man-made, and hence must be reviewed for authenticity in light of Qur'an and valid Sunnah.

The most important point that he made was that jurists' use of the Canon changed from approaching it as a source to explain, to using it as a tool to support their pre-conceived opinions. As an example, he cited Al-Shafi`i, who when confronted with challenges of his claim that consensus is a source of Islamic jurisprudence, said that he re-read the Qur'an three times until he found proof for the legislative power of consensus in the verse [Al-Nisaa;:115]
ومن يشاقق الرسول من بعد ما تبين له الهدى ويتبع غير سبيل المؤمنين نوله ما تولى ونصله جهنم وساءت مصيراً
He argued convincingly that - regardless of the validity of this proof, the very fact that Al-Shafi`i had to search for the proof post hoc shows that he had reached the conclusion independently, and then went looking for proof. Likewise, he argued, much of what is considered religious science from the First Century AH onwards was in-fact the product of the human minds of scholars, and they only used references to the Canon as post hoc support.

In my recent writings, e.g. my forthcoming book on Islamic Finance, I have argued similarly that Islamic jurisprudence is in fact a common-law system (based on precedent and analogy), despite pretending to be a canon-law system (that ostensibly obtains rulings for new situations only through analogies to Canonical rulings). Many others have noticed this similarity of Islamic jurisprudence to Anglo-American common law, both in methodology and in substance. I think that this is a point of strength not of weakness.

While Dr. Taha was arguing that we should go back to the Canon, and aim to rediscover Islamic law in its pure form, I think thhat this suggestion is disingenuous. If the best scholars only one century after the Prophet's death failed to do so, what hope do we have? The best we can do -- I believe -- is to admit the common-law feature of jurisprudence, and thus to admit that the bulk of our traditional jurisprudence is based on outdated legal and secular knowledge. Rather than maintaining the pietist view that scholars who were temporally closer to the source must be more knowledgeable (hence refusing, e.g. to reverse a ruling of Al-Shafi`i on a problem that he addressed directly), we can thus agree that religious sciences -- like all sciences -- accumulate knowledge, and later analysts are generally better positioned to provide better answers, based both on the benefit of hindsight, but also on the accumulated knowledge and experience in other sciences and other legal systems.