Toward Our Reformation From Legalism to Value-oriented Islamic Law and Jurisprudence By Mohammad Omar Farooq (London and Herndon, VA: IIIT, 2011. 323 pages.)

Abstract

Understandably, Muslims tend to bristle at the common quip by non-Muslims

(especially in the West) that Islam is badly in need of a “Reformation” – referring

to the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation that, despite the violence

it unleashed in Europe for the next two centuries, did actually engender

some positive changes within the Catholic church. No people, regardless of

who they are or where they live, like outsiders telling them that they need to

set their house in order.

This book, by contrast, is written by an insider telling other insiders (Muslims)

that Islamic law needs serious revamping, a weighty charge indeed. The

author faces an extra hurdle based on the fact that he does not belong to the

traditional ulama class, the gatekeepers of Islamic jurisprudence. Farooq earned

a Ph.D. in economics at the University of Tennessee, taught in the United States

for over a decade, and now heads the Bahrain Institute for Banking and Finance’s

Centre for Islamic Finance. Rashid Rida would have said in his day

that Farooq represents the new face of the ulama: one well versed in many aspects

of the Islamic sciences and yet, because of his parallel expertise in the

modern sciences, one who could provide indispensable guidance to society in

the name of Islam.

Why does Islam need a reformation? Much of the book seeks to expose

the abuse, misapplication, and distortion of the Shari‘ah committed by states

and individual ulama alike, for it “is being used to rubber stamp extremist, violent

behavior, the abuse of women, and the unfair control and imprisonment

of human beings” (p. 16). Speaking of South Asia in particular, he writes that

the following are “prevalent”: “[t]he torture and persecution of brides over

their dowry, the throwing of acid onto girls who do not either want to accept

a proposal of marriage or to concede to extramarital sex, the practice of honor

killings and so on …” (p. 86) ...