The old Shari‘ah Perspectives blog
Back in 2006–2008, I had a small blog called “Shari‘ah Perspectives” while I was in Cairo. I wrote most of the posts, with maybe 10% coming from a few friends. …
Comment: Pork-free “pork”
This article describing a pork-free “pork” mentions that the product is …gluten-free and designed for kosher and halal certification, looks strikingly similar to real pork, with its light pink hue …
Abusing the middle position
The frequency that canned oversimplifications like “Islam always takes the middle position” “Truth always lies in the middle position” are now given as foundations or integral supports for arguments related …
Comment: “One act of zina is less sinful than watching ten seconds of porn”
Someone asked me about the following statement: “One act of zina is less sinful than watching ten seconds of porn” Here are just four cars involved in this trainwreck: Punishments …
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Dismissing blocking-the-means just for lack of certainty
Dismissing an argument that follows the form X leads to haram-Y what leads to the haram is haram therefor X is haram for no reason other than “X doesn’t always …
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Advice for benefiting from “Infamies of the Soul”
A friend who is teaching Infamies of the Soul asked for additional resources and general advice on teaching the book. I don’t have a lot of advice, but here goes: …
Dismissing specific claims of consensus on the grounds that “Consensus is a weak argument”
Someone recently asked me to review a piece where a contemporary figure dismisses one of Imam al-Nawawi’s opinions simply because the Imam’s argument includes mention of consensus, and that consensus …
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Temporal Fixity & Flexibility in Legal Rulings
(n.b. The content for this article comes from a short class on legal maxims, presented in 2014. It provides more information than the earlier article on the abuse of customs.) …
First mention: “Means having the status of ends”
One of the patterns you’ll see later legal scholars use in arguments is that “means having the legal status of ends” (للوسائل حكم المقاصد). It’s especially common when objectives of …
Stylistic changes in foundational evidence
One of the patterns you’ll see in later Shafiʿis books is that when introducing a topic’s foundation evidence, the author will say “The foundation for it, prior to consensus is …