Safwat opened a rigorous theoretical space for secular state law within Islamic reform.

Evidence

The almost indefinite extension of “natural” rights may thus be curtailed by the state through legislation without infringing the rules of (religiously derived) morality, because the state’s jurisdiction lies beyond the two Qur’anic classes of forbidden and obligatory acts. The argument by which Safwat delimits the sphere of religious rules and opens up the space for secular state law is, I think, one of the earliest and most rigorous of its kind in modern Islamic reform. Thus although he repeatedly adverts to the importance of recent historical changes and to the need for responding to them, he does not make that the basic method of reform. He does not, for example, take the easy way out (as others have done since) by resorting directly to the slippery notion of “public interest” (istisla¯h) in order to adjust shari¯‘a rules to “modern standards.” He first clears a theoretical space in which the state can judge and act freely in limiting the liberties of its individual citizens in the public interest—an interest that presupposes the conditions in which civilized life can be lived by all. — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 1145

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies Safwat’s two-step: rather than istislah (public interest) as the method, he first carves out a jurisdictional space for state law.