British codification transformed Shari’a into state-administered Anglo-Muhammadan law

Evidence

“The shari¯‘a was not abandoned,” writes Nathan Brown, “but it was restricted to matters of personal status and to areas where it could be clearly and easily codified.” But when the shari¯‘a is structured essentially as a set of legal rules defining personal status, it is radically transformed. This is not because the shari¯‘a, by being confined to the private domain, is thereby deprived of political authority, something that advocates of an Islamic state argue should be restored. On the contrary, what happens to the shari¯‘a is best described not as curtailment but as transmutation. It is rendered into a subdivision of legal norms (fiqh) that are authorized and maintained by the centralizing state. — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 1090 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Western codification changed legal practice surprisingly little once enacted — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 2356; French colonialism reduced Shariʿa law to mere personal status adjudication; Codification expresses the nation-state’s top-down will to power, unlike Shariʿa’s bottom-up structure (+8 more)

Broader Connections

• Colonial-modern states transmuted shari’a into codified private status law. #expands (0.93) — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 1090