The Rise of Critical Islam

In a richly narrated historical study, Youcef Soufi excavates an Islamic legal culture of critique from the 10th to 13th centuries. Focusing on the practice of mun=a.zara (disputation), Soufi explores how and why oral debates became a pervasive and revered part of the intellectual legal landscape of Iraq and Persia. Using the life and career of celebrated Iraqi jurist Abū Is.h=aq al-Sh=ir=az=i, he traces the formalization of debate gatherings at the dawn of the classical legal schools (al-madh=ahib) in the early 10th century and analyzes the wider institutional, social, and discursive conditions that made debate an important feature of any jurist's practice. Pushing back against claims that classical Muslim jurists sought to weed out differences of opinion, The Rise of Critical Islam presents a community committed to the openness, fluidity, and continued exploration of the law. Challenging the view of debate gatherings simply as mechanisms of doctrinal resolution before...