Sherman A Jackson
Biographic Data
| ID | 3620585 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Sherman A Jackson |
| GIVEN NAMES | Sherman A |
| FAMILY NAME | Jackson |
| SIGNATURE | JACKSON S A |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Southern California |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 34 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 31 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 34 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1992 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
The Making of the Modern Muslim State: Islam and Governance in the Middle East and North Africa, written by Malika Zeghal
The Islamic Secular
This book argues that the common notion of a fundamental conflict between the secular and the religious cannot be applied to Islam. This is not because Islam rejects the secular in favor of the religious; it is because Islam’s concept of the religious includes the secular. This is what is captured by the term “Islamic Secular.” Contrary both to the notion that “religion” in Islam equals “sharī‘ah,” and to the concomitant notion that sharī‘ah is t…
The Islamic Secular (2017)
It is common to assume an inherent conflict between the substanceof the category “religion” and the category “secular.” Givenits putative rejection of the separation between the sacred andthe profane, this conflict is presumed to be all the more solid inIslam. But even assuming Islam’s rejection of the sacred/profanedichotomy, there may be other ways of defining the secular inIslam and of thinking about its relationship with the religion.This is …
Islam and the Promotion of Human Rights
In his insightful book Human Rights as Politics and Idolatry, Michael Ignatieff observes that “[t]he challenge of Islam has been there from the beginning.”1 Ignatieff is not alone among Western observers. And in this context, I would like to begin by stating up front that I am neither an opponent of human rights per se nor among those tradition-bound Muslims—though that I am–who abstain from either endorsing the construct or rejecting it outright…
Ijtihād and taqlīd
This chapter aims to compare several competing perspectives on the Islamic legal institutions of ijtihad and taqlid. It argues that two of these extremely influential approaches carry into their analyses Western modernity’s positive valuation of reason, as an autonomous, self-authenticating episteme, coupled with a negative valuation of mimesis, as a heteronomous, historically bound means of authenticating claims to knowledge. The special issue o…
The Islamic Secular
It is common to assume an inherent conflict between the substance of the category “religion” and the category “secular.” Given its putative rejection of the separation between the sacred and the profane, this conflict is presumed to be all the more solid in Islam. But even assuming Islam’s rejection of the sacred/profane dichotomy, there may be other ways of defining the secular in Islam and of thinking about its relationship with the religion. T…
Denise A. Spellberg, Thomas Jefferson's Qur'an: Islam and the Founders
The Alchemy of Domination, 2.0?1 A Response to Professor Kecia Ali
In her critical essay, “The Omnipresent Male Scholar,”2 Professor Kecia Alisets out to call attention to what she sees as the hegemonic privileging ofthe male scholarly perspective and the need to replace this with an academiclandscape more reflective and accommodating of the experiences andscholarly vantage points of women. To this end, she profiles the works ofseveral (Muslim) men in Islamic Studies (myself included) and highlightsthe various w…
Response to Professor Fadel and Professor Iqtidar
Professor Fadel sees me as claiming that the Islamic secular “places jurisdictionalboundaries on what religion can rightfully claim, thereby creating a legitimatespace for non-religious, i.e., ‘secular’ reason.” What actually I argued,however, was that Sharia placed limits on its own shar‘ī jurisdiction, obviatingthe necessity-cum-legitimacy not of non-religious, secular reason but of religioussecular reason. He appears to be unable to transcend …
The Islamic Secular
It is common to assume an inherent conflict between the substance of the category “religion” and the category “secular.” Given its putative rejection of the separation between the sacred and the profane, this conflict is presumed to be all the more solid in Islam. But even assuming Islam’s rejection of the sacred/profane dichotomy, there may be other ways of defining the secular in Islam and of thinking about its relationship with the religion. T…
Islamic Law, Muslims and American Politics
In this article I ask whether and how Islamic law constricts American Muslims in their ability to negotiate the applied socio-political order. Assuming sharī‘ah to be their point of departure, I ask if their efforts are religiously legitimate or purely pragmatic and necessarily oblivious to Islamic law. In this context, I explore how Islamic law is negotiated across space and time, the degree of recognition it accords to local (including non-Musl…
Shari'a: Theory, Practice, Transformations. By Wael B. Hallaq
For some three decades, Professor Wael Hallaq has been a singularly powerful voice in the field of Islamic law, making seminal contributions thereto and establishing himself as a leading Western academic on the subject. Given the length of the present book, one might expect it to constitute litte more than a detailed summary of the vast knowledge that has accrued to Hallaq over the years. While in many ways it is precisely that, this book is sign…
Islamic Reform between Islamic Law and the Nation-State
Not Truth But Tolerance: A (Much Belated) Response to Atif Khalil
I should like to begin this essay with a sincere apology. More than five yearshave passed since Professor Atif Khalil penned his scholarly critique ofsome of my suggestive ruminations on intra-Islamic theological ecumenismin the introduction to my translation of Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghâzalî’s Fayṣalal-Tafriqa.1 While scholarly convention – not to mention etiquette ‒ wouldcertainly demand a much more timely response than I have been able tomanage, I am af…
Black Orientalism
In 1978, Edward said published his now-famous Orientalism.1 A Christian Palestinian, Said devoted Orientalism to exposing the manner in which the prejudices and power of Europe, and later, the United States, created both a geographical entity called "the Orient" and a scholarly tradition of speaking and writing about it. This was not the Orient of Japan or China; this was the "Near East" and "Middle East." While Jews, Christians, and others contr…
Between Preachers and Warriors
Even among those who actively pursue greater public recognition for Islam as a way of life, the Muslim world is not a monolith. Failure to recognize this leads to an unnecessary swelling of the ranks of those whom the West takes as enemies. Professor Amitai Etzioni suggests that this myopia can be overcome via a distinction between those he refers to as Preachers versus those he refers to as Warriors. I see considerable evidence in favor of Profe…
Islam and the Blackamerican: Looking Toward the Third Resurrection
This book offers a trenchant examination of the career of Islam among the blacks of America. No one has offered a convincing explanation of why Islam spread among Blackamericans (a coinage he explains and defends) but not among white Americans or Hispanics. The assumption has been that there is an African connection. In fact, the book shows, none of the distinctive features of African Islam appear in the proto-Islamic, black nationalist movements…
On the Boundaries of Theological Tolerance in Islam: Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī's Fayṣal al-Tafriqa
Fiction and Formalism: Toward a Functional Analysis of Uṣūl al-fiqh
Shi'i Scholars of Nineteenth-Century Iraq: The 'Ulama' of Najaf and Karbala'
Kramer Versus Kramer in a Tenth/Sixteenth Century Egyptian Court: Post-Formative Jurisprudence Between Exigency and Law
The relationship between the individual jurist, the madhhab and scripture (Qur'ān and Sunnah) has long been a topic of debate among scholars of Islamic law. Based on a detailed fatwā on a controversial issue in tenth/sixteenth century Cairo, the present essay describes how, in the post-formative period, the madhhab mediated between the jurist and the sources. While clearly reflecting a commitment to taqlīd, this fatwā renders problematic the attr…
Domestic Terrorism in the Islamic Legal Tradition
Peer Reviewed
Muslims, Islamic Law, and the Sociopolitical Reality in the United States
Native born African-American Muslims and the Immigrant Muslimcommunity foxms two important groups within the American Muslimcommunity. Whereas the sociopolitical reality is objectively the samefor both groups, their subjective responses are quite different. Both arevulnerable to a “double Consciousness,” i.e., an independently subjectiveconsciousness, as well as seeing oneself through the eyes of theother, thus reducing one’s self-image to an obj…
Islam and Affirmative Action
This essay must begin with a point of clarification that is critical for those unfamiliar with Islam. While it is my belief that the view I present represents an Islamic position on Affirmative Action, I make no claim to represent the Islamic position. For far from constituting a monolith, as American public perception has it, the Muslim population in the United States is a heterogeneous amalgamation of somewhere around six million people. And wh…
The Alchemy of Domination? Some Ashʿarite Responses to Muʾtazilite Ethics
In his provocative essay Knowledge and Politics , Harvard Law School professor Roberto Unger undertook what has since become a familiar critique of the contemporary social and political order. Beginning with the main postulates of Enlightenment epistemology, Unger contended that our acceptance of “liberal philosophy” has divided us, as moral beings, between the private world of value and desire and the public world of rules and reason. Since, mor…
Taqlīd, Legal Scaffolding and the Scope of Legal Injunctions in Post-Formative Theory
The controversy surrounding ijtihād and Taqlīd is well-known in modern scholarship. In the present essay, I offer an alternative to the leading views on this crux by treating the issue of scope in the jurisprudential writings of Shihāb al-Dīn al-Qarāfī as a reflection of the manner and direction in which the Islamic legal tradition tended to develop subsequent to the so-called settling down of the four schools of law. At the center of this develo…
The Islamic Secular
It is common to assume an inherent conflict between the substance of the category “religion” and the category “secular.” Given its putative rejection of the separation between the sacred and the profane, this conflict is presumed to be all the more solid in Islam. But even assuming Islam’s rejection of the sacred/profane dichotomy, there may be other ways of defining the secular in Islam and of thinking about its relationship with the religion. T…
Domestic Terrorism in the Islamic Legal Tradition
Peer Reviewed
Islamic Law, Muslims and American Politics
In this article I ask whether and how Islamic law constricts American Muslims in their ability to negotiate the applied socio-political order. Assuming sharī‘ah to be their point of departure, I ask if their efforts are religiously legitimate or purely pragmatic and necessarily oblivious to Islamic law. In this context, I explore how Islamic law is negotiated across space and time, the degree of recognition it accords to local (including non-Musl…
Islamic Law and the State. The Constitutional Jurisprudence of Shihab al-Din al-Qarafi
The Alchemy of Domination? Some Ashʿarite Responses to Muʾtazilite Ethics
In his provocative essay Knowledge and Politics , Harvard Law School professor Roberto Unger undertook what has since become a familiar critique of the contemporary social and political order. Beginning with the main postulates of Enlightenment epistemology, Unger contended that our acceptance of “liberal philosophy” has divided us, as moral beings, between the private world of value and desire and the public world of rules and reason. Since, mor…
From Prophetic Actions to Constitutional Theory: A Novel Chapter in Medieval Muslim Jurisprudence
In his seminal and pioneering work, al-Risāla , al-Shafiʿi, the founder of juridical uṣul al-fiqh , laid down the following maxim: God has obliged us to follow everything the Prophet instituted ( sanna ). And He has rendered adherence to this obedience to Him and turning away from it disobedience [to Him] for which He excuses no one
The Alchemy of Domination, 2.0?1 A Response to Professor Kecia Ali
In her critical essay, “The Omnipresent Male Scholar,”2 Professor Kecia Alisets out to call attention to what she sees as the hegemonic privileging ofthe male scholarly perspective and the need to replace this with an academiclandscape more reflective and accommodating of the experiences andscholarly vantage points of women. To this end, she profiles the works ofseveral (Muslim) men in Islamic Studies (myself included) and highlightsthe various w…
Kramer Versus Kramer in a Tenth/Sixteenth Century Egyptian Court: Post-Formative Jurisprudence Between Exigency and Law
The relationship between the individual jurist, the madhhab and scripture (Qur'ān and Sunnah) has long been a topic of debate among scholars of Islamic law. Based on a detailed fatwā on a controversial issue in tenth/sixteenth century Cairo, the present essay describes how, in the post-formative period, the madhhab mediated between the jurist and the sources. While clearly reflecting a commitment to taqlīd, this fatwā renders problematic the attr…
The Primacy of Domestic Politics: Ibn Bint al-Aʿazz and the Establishment of Four Chief Judgeships in Mamlûk Egypt
Baybars Ier, sultan d'Egypte en 658/1260, engagea une campagne de legitimation dans le but de transformer son image de mercenaire mamelouk en celle d'un heros de la bienveillante loi islamique. La cle du succes de cette campagne aurait ete la nomination du juriste Shâf⊂i, Tâj al-Din Ibn Bint al-A⊂azz, a la tete du systeme judiciaire. Ce dernier, toutefois, pousuivit les politiques de menace d'alienation des ecoles de lois restantes au regime du s…
The Second Education of the Muft: Notes on Shihāb Al‐d?n Al‐qarāf?'s Tips to the Jurisconsult
The Second Education of the Muft: Notes on Shihāb Al‐d?n Al‐qarāf?'s Tips to the Jurisconsult
From Prophetic Actions to Constitutional Theory: A Novel Chapter in Medieval Muslim Jurisprudence
In his seminal and pioneering work, al-Risāla , al-Shafiʿi, the founder of juridical uṣul al-fiqh , laid down the following maxim: God has obliged us to follow everything the Prophet instituted ( sanna ). And He has rendered adherence to this obedience to Him and turning away from it disobedience [to Him] for which He excuses no one
The Sono-Qur’an, recited by Sheikh Mahmud Sadiq Al-Minshawi. 480 discs + transcript in looseleaf binder, index, Sonobox. Stuttgart: Sono-System Ltd., 1992. $250 (USA Branch: Mockingbird Valley, Louisv…
The Sono-Qur’an, recited by Sheikh Mahmud Sadiq Al-Minshawi. 480 discs + transcript in looseleaf binder, index, Sonobox. Stuttgart: SONO-System Ltd., 1992. $250 (USA Branch: Mockingbird Valley, Louisville, KY 40207) - Volume 29 Issue 1
Islamic Law and Jurisprudence: Studies in Honor of Farhat J. Ziadeh . Nicholas Heer
The Primacy of Domestic Politics: Ibn Bint al-Aʿazz and the Establishment of Four Chief Judgeships in Mamlûk Egypt
Baybars Ier, sultan d'Egypte en 658/1260, engagea une campagne de legitimation dans le but de transformer son image de mercenaire mamelouk en celle d'un heros de la bienveillante loi islamique. La cle du succes de cette campagne aurait ete la nomination du juriste Shâf⊂i, Tâj al-Din Ibn Bint al-A⊂azz, a la tete du systeme judiciaire. Ce dernier, toutefois, pousuivit les politiques de menace d'alienation des ecoles de lois restantes au regime du s…
Islamic Law and the State: The Constitutional Jurisprudence of Shihāb al-Dīn al-Qarāfī
This book deals with an Ayyūbid-Mamlūk Egyptian jurist's attempt to come to terms with the potential conflict between power, represented in the state, and authority, represented in the schools of law, particularly where one school enjoys a privileged status with the state. It deals with the history of the relationship between the schools of law, particularly in Mamlūk Egypt, in the context of the running history of Islamic law from the formative …
Taqlīd, Legal Scaffolding and the Scope of Legal Injunctions in Post-Formative Theory
The controversy surrounding ijtihād and Taqlīd is well-known in modern scholarship. In the present essay, I offer an alternative to the leading views on this crux by treating the issue of scope in the jurisprudential writings of Shihāb al-Dīn al-Qarāfī as a reflection of the manner and direction in which the Islamic legal tradition tended to develop subsequent to the so-called settling down of the four schools of law. At the center of this develo…
Islamic Law and the State. The Constitutional Jurisprudence of Shihab al-Din al-Qarafi
Islam and Affirmative Action
This essay must begin with a point of clarification that is critical for those unfamiliar with Islam. While it is my belief that the view I present represents an Islamic position on Affirmative Action, I make no claim to represent the Islamic position. For far from constituting a monolith, as American public perception has it, the Muslim population in the United States is a heterogeneous amalgamation of somewhere around six million people. And wh…
The Alchemy of Domination? Some Ashʿarite Responses to Muʾtazilite Ethics
In his provocative essay Knowledge and Politics , Harvard Law School professor Roberto Unger undertook what has since become a familiar critique of the contemporary social and political order. Beginning with the main postulates of Enlightenment epistemology, Unger contended that our acceptance of “liberal philosophy” has divided us, as moral beings, between the private world of value and desire and the public world of rules and reason. Since, mor…
Mohammad Hashim Kamali, Freedom of Expression in Islam (Cambridge: (Islamic Texts Society, 1994). Pp. 349
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Muslims, Islamic Law, and the Sociopolitical Reality in the United States
Native born African-American Muslims and the Immigrant Muslimcommunity foxms two important groups within the American Muslimcommunity. Whereas the sociopolitical reality is objectively the samefor both groups, their subjective responses are quite different. Both arevulnerable to a “double Consciousness,” i.e., an independently subjectiveconsciousness, as well as seeing oneself through the eyes of theother, thus reducing one’s self-image to an obj…
Shi'i Scholars of Nineteenth-Century Iraq: The 'Ulama' of Najaf and Karbala'
Kramer Versus Kramer in a Tenth/Sixteenth Century Egyptian Court: Post-Formative Jurisprudence Between Exigency and Law
The relationship between the individual jurist, the madhhab and scripture (Qur'ān and Sunnah) has long been a topic of debate among scholars of Islamic law. Based on a detailed fatwā on a controversial issue in tenth/sixteenth century Cairo, the present essay describes how, in the post-formative period, the madhhab mediated between the jurist and the sources. While clearly reflecting a commitment to taqlīd, this fatwā renders problematic the attr…
Domestic Terrorism in the Islamic Legal Tradition
Peer Reviewed
Fiction and Formalism: Toward a Functional Analysis of Uṣūl al-fiqh
On the Boundaries of Theological Tolerance in Islam: Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī's Fayṣal al-Tafriqa
Islam and the Blackamerican: Looking Toward the Third Resurrection
This book offers a trenchant examination of the career of Islam among the blacks of America. No one has offered a convincing explanation of why Islam spread among Blackamericans (a coinage he explains and defends) but not among white Americans or Hispanics. The assumption has been that there is an African connection. In fact, the book shows, none of the distinctive features of African Islam appear in the proto-Islamic, black nationalist movements…
Between Preachers and Warriors
Even among those who actively pursue greater public recognition for Islam as a way of life, the Muslim world is not a monolith. Failure to recognize this leads to an unnecessary swelling of the ranks of those whom the West takes as enemies. Professor Amitai Etzioni suggests that this myopia can be overcome via a distinction between those he refers to as Preachers versus those he refers to as Warriors. I see considerable evidence in favor of Profe…
Black Orientalism
In 1978, Edward said published his now-famous Orientalism.1 A Christian Palestinian, Said devoted Orientalism to exposing the manner in which the prejudices and power of Europe, and later, the United States, created both a geographical entity called "the Orient" and a scholarly tradition of speaking and writing about it. This was not the Orient of Japan or China; this was the "Near East" and "Middle East." While Jews, Christians, and others contr…
Not Truth But Tolerance: A (Much Belated) Response to Atif Khalil
I should like to begin this essay with a sincere apology. More than five yearshave passed since Professor Atif Khalil penned his scholarly critique ofsome of my suggestive ruminations on intra-Islamic theological ecumenismin the introduction to my translation of Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghâzalî’s Fayṣalal-Tafriqa.1 While scholarly convention – not to mention etiquette ‒ wouldcertainly demand a much more timely response than I have been able tomanage, I am af…
Islamic Reform between Islamic Law and the Nation-State
Shari'a: Theory, Practice, Transformations. By Wael B. Hallaq
For some three decades, Professor Wael Hallaq has been a singularly powerful voice in the field of Islamic law, making seminal contributions thereto and establishing himself as a leading Western academic on the subject. Given the length of the present book, one might expect it to constitute litte more than a detailed summary of the vast knowledge that has accrued to Hallaq over the years. While in many ways it is precisely that, this book is sign…
Islamic Law, Muslims and American Politics
In this article I ask whether and how Islamic law constricts American Muslims in their ability to negotiate the applied socio-political order. Assuming sharī‘ah to be their point of departure, I ask if their efforts are religiously legitimate or purely pragmatic and necessarily oblivious to Islamic law. In this context, I explore how Islamic law is negotiated across space and time, the degree of recognition it accords to local (including non-Musl…
Response to Professor Fadel and Professor Iqtidar
Professor Fadel sees me as claiming that the Islamic secular “places jurisdictionalboundaries on what religion can rightfully claim, thereby creating a legitimatespace for non-religious, i.e., ‘secular’ reason.” What actually I argued,however, was that Sharia placed limits on its own shar‘ī jurisdiction, obviatingthe necessity-cum-legitimacy not of non-religious, secular reason but of religioussecular reason. He appears to be unable to transcend …
Philosophy (27 works) · Islam (26 works) · Islamic Studies and History (26 works) · Political science (25 works) · Law (22 works) · Sociology (21 works) · Theology (19 works) · History (14 works) · Philosophy (14 works) · Law (13 works)