Abstract The Muwāfaqāt of Abū Isḥāq al-Shāṭibī (d. 790/1388) is commonly held to have fallen into obscurity for five centuries before Muḥammad ʿAbduh (d. 1905) “rediscovered” it through the 1884 Tunis printing, setting the stage for the modern maqāṣid revival. This narrative leaves unexplained both that edition’s sources and the transmission of al-Shāṭibī’s works and thought during the intervening centuries. Drawing on manuscripts, ijāza records, biographical dictionaries and Mālikī texts, I trace the reception of the Muwāfaqāt and al-Shāṭibī’s thought across North Africa and the Sahara through scholarly networks from 816/1414 to 1330/1912. The evidence shows that throughout this supposed period of obscurity, his work was transmitted, formally taught, and substantively engaged within a living tradition that absorbed and naturalised his thought. I argue that the “lost and found” narrative reflects a Cairo-centred reformist historiography and an argument from silence that cannot be maintained given al-Shāṭibī’s reception within the Mālikī school.
Abstract This study examines how Salafi-jihadi and Salafi-taqlidi jurists use the doctrine of al-walāʾ wa-l-barāʾ to regulate internal states, intention, and behavior, and how such regulation serves to safeguard communal purity. Based on an analysis of juridical rulings from 2003–2023, I argue that Salafi legal discourse extends beyond regulating observable conduct to prescribing internal states as legally determinative of Muslim identity. The jurists mandate active hostility toward non-Muslims and apostates, making sentiment a constitutive element of legal compliance. When Salafis have no options but to engage with “apostate” entities, jurists permit such interactions, but require specific emotional dispositions, specifically hatred and contempt, as safeguards against spiritual contamination. This regulation functions as a juridical mechanism that prevents forbidden association with unbelief. By regulating internal states, Salafi jurists construct a comprehensive normative doctrine that transforms emotional/psychological experience into an enforceable religious obligation.
Abstract The Ḥanbalīs, one of the four schools of Islamic law ( madhāhib ), are exceptional in that they are also an activist community whose members invest tremendous efforts to eradicate what they perceive to be wrong beliefs and moral corruption. In this essay I will inquire about the feature that set the Ḥanbalīs apart from other schools of law: activism. I begin with a brief description of their behavior and how they confronted alleged wrongdoers, and then expound on their legal and biographic writings, and how these writings served as the foundation of the Ḥanbalī ethos of activism. Finally, I assess the impact of the miḥna on the Ḥanbalīs’ activist approach. The essay examines how Ḥanbalī thought on law, theology, and morality generated an activist approach that steered their collective conduct in the public sphere.
