Islamic Law and Religion 7 - 8 Rabi' al Akhir 1414 / 24 - 25 September 1993 Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut

Abstract

Although the seminar's presentations were not centered around a
single issue in Islamic law, two common purposes were apparent: to explore
the nature of change in Islamic law and to understand the relationship
between religious authority and the practice of the law.
It is useful to begin with the presentation of Abbas Amanat (Yale
University) on the history of modem Shi'i law, since he was the only
speaker who held to the characterii.ation of Islamic law (at least in modem
Iran) as removed from practical life, concerned with insignificant details
of ritual, and heir to a textual tradition reduced to commentaries on
commentaries. Amanat decried the fact that the Iranian ulema missed the
opportunity in the nineteenth century to refonn significantly the legal system.
He argued that the success achieved by the religious scholars in instigating
the tobacco boycott of 1891 should have mobilized them to call
for significant institutional changes in Iranian law. Yet with the end of
the boycott, the scholars returned to the same old business of speculating
on questions irrelevant to the needs of a changing society.
Amanat admitted in the question and answer period that the ulema
were restricted by political circumstances; indeed they may not have survived
to seize control of the government in our times if they had pressed
for reform too quickly. lbis is an issue that has not been explored sufficiently
in the history of Islamic law: when jurists had no direct coercive
power over governments, how did they use their moral authority to effect
change? No doubt there were always individuals who had few scruples
about endorsing whatever the ruling elite desired, yet there were others
who pressed for change when they calculated that such pressure could be
effective. Close biographical studies of individual scholars in their social ...