Transformations of Tradition - Islamic Law in Colonial Modernity

Transformations of Tradition probes how the encounter with colonial modernity conditioned Islamic jurists'' conceptualizations of the shari''a. Focusing on the jurisprudential writings of Muhammad Bakhit al-Muti-i (1854-1935), Mufti of Egypt for a time, Junaid Quadri locates a remarkable series of foundational intellectual shifts that throw into doubt the possibility of reading the modern trajectory of Islamic law through the lens of a continuous tradition. Through close readings of complex legal texts and mining archives oft-neglected in the field, this carefully researched study uncovers a shari''a that is neither a medieval holdover nor merely a pragmatic concession to the demands of a new world, but rather is deeply entangled with the epistemological commitments of colonial modernity.