Abstract
The presence of Muslim communities in non-Muslim polities is not a modern phenomenon. Since the first century of Islam, corresponding to the seventh century A.D., Muslims traveled, immigrated, and settled beyond their heartland. They have lived in Spain, Sicily, the Balkans, India, China, Brazil, South Africa, and more recently in Western Europe and America. This long interaction with the non-Muslim world has had its impact on Islamic theology, jurisprudence, and philosophy. The case of Andalusia, for example, is significant, where Muslim scholars developed jurisprudential and philosophical orientations that were largely a result of their interaction with the indigenous civilization.1
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Notes
One may refer here to fatwa collections published during that period. See European Council for Fatwa and Research, Qarārāt wa-Fatāwā al-Majlis al-’Urūbīlil-Iftā͗ wa-al-Buḥūth (Cairo: Dāral-Tawzī wa-al-Nashral-Islāmiyyah, 2002); Questions and Answers about Islam (England: Ta-Ha Publishers Ltd; 2nd ed., 1997); and early fatwas of IslamOnline.net, etc.
For a review of al-Azhar’s history, see Bayard Dodge, Al-Azhar: A Millennium of Muslim Learning (Washington: the Middle East Institute, 1974);
Chris Eccel, Egypt, Islam and Social Change: al-Azhar in Conflict and Accommodations (Berlin: Klaus Schwarz Verlag, 1984);
Abdel-Azīz Muḥammad al-Shinnāwī, al-Azhar Jāmi’ wa-Jāmi͑ah (Cairo: Egyptian Anglo, 1983);
Muḥammad Abdullah Anān, Tārīkh al-Jāmi͑ al-Azhar (Cairo: Mu’assasat al-Khāngī, 1958).
Muḥammad ͑Awaḍ, al-Azhar: Ayy Mustaqbal Yantaẓiruh (Cairo: Wakālat al-Ṣaḥāfah al-͑Arabiyyah, 2007), 15.
Malika Zeghal, “The ‘Recentering’ of Religious Knowledge and Discourse: The Case of al-Azhar in Twentieth Century Egypt,” in Schooling Islam, the Culture and Politics of Modern Muslim Education, ed. Robert W. Hefner and Muhammad Qasim Zaman (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007).
For detailed statistics of this period, see Ilāqāt al-Āmmah, Jāmi͑at al-Azhar fī Sutūr (Cairo: Al-Azhar, 1996).
A brief overview of some of those Azharite-educated personnel was given in Dodge, Al-Azhar: A Millennium, 176ff. Also al-Shawārbī referred to two of al-Azhar-educated imams in America who were leading their Yugoslavian and Albanian communities. See al-Shawārbī, Al-Islām fī Amrikā (Cairo: Lajnat al-Bayān Al-͑Arabī, 1960), 18.
William L. Cleveland, A History of the Modern Middle East (Boulder: Westview Press, 2009);
Hassan Hassan, In The House of Muhammad Ali (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2000).
See Muḥammad ͑Abdullah ͑Anan, Tarīkh al-Jāmi͑ al-Azhar, 2nd ed. (Cairo: Mu’assasat al-Khangī, 1958), 33–42.
Muḥammad ͑Abdel-Mun͑im Khafājī and ͑Ali Ṣubḥ, Al-Ḥarakah al-͑lmiyyah fī al-Azhar fī al-Qarnayn al-Tāsi͑ Ashar wa-al-͑Ishrīn (Cairo: Al-Maktabah al-Azhariyyah li-al-Turāth, 2007), 103ff.
Dr. Muḥammad al-Bahy (1905–1982) got his PhD in philosophy from Hamburg University, Germany. He was fluent in German, English, Latin, and Ancient Greek. In 1958, he was appointed the general director of Islamic Culture Department in al-Azhar and later the first rector of the “modern” University of al-Azhar in 1961. Muḥammad al-Bahy, Ḥayātīfī Riḥāb al-Azhar (Cairo: Maktabat Wahbah, 1983).
͑Abdel-Halīm Maḥmūd, Urūbbā wa al-Islām (Cairo: Dār al-Ma͑ārif, 1993).
Jād al-Ḥaqq ͑Ali Jād al-Ḥaqq, “Dawr al-Ijtihād fī al-Gharb,” al-Azhar, vol. 68 (November 1995): 784.
Muḥammad Sayyid Ṭanṭāwī, Ta͗ā mmulāt fi Khitāb al-Ra’ī s Barak Obama min Manẓūr Islāmī (al-Azhar Magazine gift, August, 2009), 18.
Muḥammad al-Khidr Ḥusayn, “Muhakāt al-Muslimīn li-al-Agānib” Majallat al-Azhar, 3 (1932): 375ff
See the fatwa of the mufti of Egypt, Sheikh Alī Jum͗ah, on the permissibility of void transaction in the abode of non-Muslims. ͑Alī Jum͑ah, Al-Kalim al-Ṭayyib, Fatawa ͑Aṣriyyah, vol. 2 (2007): 205–209.
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© 2013 Said Fares Hassan
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Hassan, S.F. (2013). Voice of Tradition. In: Fiqh Al-Aqalliyyāt. Palgrave Series in Islamic Theology, Law, and History. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137350091_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137350091_3
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