Islamic religious duties are partly constitutive of social relations, not abstract

Evidence

The aim of treating fiqh as real law, with changing implications for everyday life, is extremely important, and Johansen’s formulation of this point opens the way for a comparative study of Islamic law that is not mired in dubious evolutionary assumptions—and therefore also for serious consideration of the relations between law and ethics in the Islamic tradition. But the following question suggests itself: Is the manipulative model the only way of representing law as “real”? And is this why we are urged to see fiqh as essentially individualistic? There seems to be a connection between the two in Johansen’s argument, and in particular in his opposing “the world of social relations” to “abstract religious duties.” And yet, are religious duties not themselves partly constitutive of the world of social relations? For although not all social relations entail religious duties (buying and selling legitimate goods, for example), some do (an offspring’s obligations to his or her parents, for instance). Another way of putting this is to say that no religious duty can be entirely abstracted from social relations. — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 1173

Categorization

• XREF: Directly interrogates the modern dichotomy between ‘real’ (worldly, social) and ‘religious’ (abstract, dutiful) — parallel to Cooper’s demonstration that policy frames separating secular economy from Christian morality are ideological constructions.
• DEEPTHINKING: Challenges the premise that making Islamic law ‘real’ requires recasting it as individualistic and instrumental, i.e., that it can only be legitimate under the secular liberal template.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular:…, 1173