This book inquires into the composition, function, and meaning of Islamic tradition, and by extension, into the larger question of the relationship between tradition and historical change. It is commonplace to characterize Islamic modernism as a rupture with tradition. This characterization maintains that modern Islamic reformist thought in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries promulgated a sharp critique of the classical Islamic scholarship, rejection of the principle of legal schools, and condemnation of taqlīd. Focusing on al-Mahdī al-Wazzānī's New Miʻyār (1910), the book demon ... More

This book inquires into the composition, function, and meaning of Islamic tradition, and by extension, into the larger question of the relationship between tradition and historical change. It is commonplace to characterize Islamic modernism as a rupture with tradition. This characterization maintains that modern Islamic reformist thought in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries promulgated a sharp critique of the classical Islamic scholarship, rejection of the principle of legal schools, and condemnation of taqlīd. Focusing on al-Mahdī al-Wazzānī's New Miʻyār (1910), the book demonstrates that fidelity to a madhhab and the authoritative rulings and opinions that had accumulated over centuries of juristic creativity did not exclude the reform, transformation, and re-creation of tradition. A detailed analysis of the five fatwās that were carefully designed by al-Wazzānī and assembled in his New Miʻyār shows how he negotiated with the new needs, norms, and sensibilities shaped by Moroccan modernity from within Islamic legal tradition. In elaborating his interpretation, al-Wazzānī, in effect, composed a new Islamic orthodoxy infused with meaning relevant to his changed world.