The Return of the Sacred to Politics as a Constitutional Law The Case of the Shari'atization of Politics in Islamic Civilization

Bassam Tibi

doi:10.3167/th.2008.5511506

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The Return of the Sacred to Politics as a Constitutional Law The Case of the Shari'atization of Politics in Islamic Civilization

in Theoria

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Bassam Tibi

Bassam Tibi

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DOI:: https://doi.org/10.3167/th.2008.5511506

Keywords:: secularization; rationalization; Islam; Shari'a Law; democracy; constitutionalism

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Modernity believed that processes of secularization and rationalization are universally applicable. What is taking place in the 21st century, however, suggests that the reverse, a process of de-secularization, is becoming the hallmark of the present age. In the case of Islamic civilization, in which law is shari'a, the challenge to secularization takes the form of a process of shari'atization. This is not the traditional or inherited shari'a, restricted to civil matters and to a penal code, but an invented shari'a, one which also claims to be a constitutional law. Moreover, the constructed shari'atized constitutional law, in conflict with secular constitutionalism and appearing to offer no middle way, has been universalized to engender an international conflict between secularization and de-secularization. Since, for most Muslims, Islam without shari'a is unthinkable, this article examines the potential for religious reform of the shari'a in the direction of cultural change, freedom and democratic constitutionalism.

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