Continuity and Change in Islamic Religious Authority
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Published:
Sep 1, 2023
Keywords:
Religious authority, continuity and change, foundational past, connection, obedient
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Abstract
This article aims to elaborate on the debate surrounding continuity and change in Islamic religious authority. The discussion begins by establishing a framework for understanding the analytical definition of authority before delving into the dimensions that experience continuity and change. Arendt defines authority as a relationship, signifying a connection to a specific discursive tradition, knowledge, and history. Additionally, it involves a relationship with others who may recognize, accept, or contest this connection. Building upon Arendt’s definition, the article deconstructs the nature of this relationship, emphasizing three constitutive elements: the notion of a past, the connection to the foundational past, and the ability to convey and enhance that model. This includes the augmentation of the foundational past and the ability to elicit obedience without resorting to coercion. What sets authority apart is its unique capacity to foster obedience through a relationship, free from coercion. To identify the constituents of authority, the article explores the question of continuity and change in a more productive manner by focusing on each of its three constitutive elements.
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Alatas, Ismail Fajrie. “Continuity and Change in Islamic Religious Authority”. Islamica: Jurnal Studi Keislaman 18, no. 1 (September 1, 2023): 115-133. Accessed April 28, 2024. https://islamica.uinsby.ac.id/index.php/islamica/article/view/1096.
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Abun-Nasr, Jamil M. Muslim Communities of Grace: The Sufi Brotherhoods in Islamic Religious Life. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007.
Alatas, Ismail Fajrie. “Dreaming Saints: Exploratory Authority and Islamic Praxes of History in Central Java.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Vol. 26, No. 1 (2020), 80-83.
-----. “S{ūfī Lineages and Families,” in Alexandre Papas (ed.), Handbook of Sufi Studies Volume I: Sufi Institutionsi. Leiden: Brill, 2021.
-----. What is Religious Authority? Cultivating Islamic Communities in Indonesia. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2021.
Amin, Shahid. Conquest and Community: The Afterlife of Warrior Saint Ghazi Miyan. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016.
Arendt, Hannah. Between Past and Future: Eight Exercises in Political Thought. New York: Penguin, [1968] 2006.
Asad, Talal. “Thinking about Tradition, Religion, and Politics in Egypt Today.” Critical Inquiry, Vol. 42, No. 1 (2015), 181.
Asad, Talal. Secular Translations: Nation-State, Modern Self, and Calculative Reason. New York: Columbia University Press, 2018.
Bashir, Shahzad. “On Islamic Time: Rethinking Chronology in the Historiography of Muslim Societies.” History and Theory, Vol. 53, No. 4 (2014), 521.
Bazzaz, Sahar. Forgotten Saints: History, Power, and Politics in the Making of Modern Morocco. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010.
Bonner, Michael. Jihad in Islamic History: Doctrines and Practice. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008.
Bradley, Francis R. Forging Islamic Power and Place: The Legacy of Shaykh Dāʾūd bin ʿAbd Allāh al-Fat}ānī in Mecca and Southeast Asia. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2016.
Brown, Jonathan A. C. Misquoting Muhammad: The Challenge and Choices of Interpreting the Prophet’s Legacy. Oxford: Oneworld, 2014.
Brown, Jonathan A. C. The Canonization of al-Bukhārī and Muslim: The Formation and Function of the Sunnī Ḥadīth Canon. Leiden: Brill, 2007.
Carr, E.H. What is History? Second Edition, ed. R.W. Davies. London: Penguin, 1990.
Chih, Rachidah. Sufism in Ottoman Egypt: Circulation, Renewal and Authority in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. London: Taylor & Francis, 2019.
Cornell, Vincent J. Realm of the Saint: Power and Authority in Moroccan Sufism. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1998.
Davidson, Garrett A. Carrying on the Tradition: A Social and Intellectual History of Hadith Transmission across a Thousand Years. Leiden: Brill, 2020.
DeWeese, Devin. “Khojagani Origins and the Critique of Sufism: The Rhetoric of Communal Uniqueness in the Manaqib of Khoja ‘Ali ‘Azizan Ramitani,” in Frederick de Jong and Berndt Radtke (eds.), Islamic Mysticism Contested: Thirteen Centuries of Controversies and Polemics. Leiden: Brill, 1999.
Donner, Fred M. Narratives of Islamic Origins: The Beginnings of Islamic Historical Writing. Princeton: Darwin Press, 1998.
El Shamsy, Ahmed. The Canonization of Islamic Law: A Social and Intellectual History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.
Ernst, Carl W. “Situating Sufism and Yoga.” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. 15, No. 1 (2005), 20.
Evans-Pritchard, E.E. The Sanusi of Cyrenaica. Oxford: Clarendon, 1949.
Faizer, Rizwi (ed.). The Life of Muḥammad: Al-Wāqidī’s Kitāb al-Maghāzī. London: Routledge, 2011.
Foucault, Michel. “The Subject and Power.” Critical Inquiry, Vol. 8, No. 4 (1982), 782-84.
Green, Nile. Bombay Islam: The Religious Economy of the West Indian Ocean, 1840–1915. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
Green, Nile. Sufism: A Global History. Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012.
Ho, Engseng. “Custom and Conversion in Malabar: Zayn al-Din al-Malibari’s Gift of the Mujahidin: Some Accounts of the Portuguese,” in Barbara D. Metcalf (ed.), Islam In South Asia in Practice. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009.
Ho, Engseng. The Graves of Tarim: Genealogy and Mobility across the Indian Ocean. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006.
Hoesterey, James. Rebranding Islam: Piety, Prosperity, and a Self-Help Guru. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2016.
Humphrey, Caroline. “Exemplars and Rules: Aspects of the Discourse of Moralities in Mongolia,” in Signe Howell (ed.), The Ethnography of Moralities. London: Routledge, 1997.
Karrar, Ali Salih. The Sufi Brotherhoods in the Sudan. London: Hurst, 1992.
Katz, Jonathan G. Dreams, Sufism, and Sainthood: The Visionary Career of Muḥammad al-Zawāwī. Leiden: Brill, 1996.
Khan, Naveeda. Muslim Becoming: Aspiration and Skepticism in Pakistan. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012.
Knysh, Alexander D. Sufism: A New History of Islamic Mysticism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017.
Machiavelli, Nicollò. The Prince, translated and edited by Peter Bondanella. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Martin van Bruinessen and Julia Day Howell (eds.), Sufism and the “Modern” in Islam. London: I. B. Tauris, 2007.
Mayeur-Jaouen, Catherine and Alexandre Papas (eds.). Family Portraits with Saints: Hagiography, Sanctity, and Family in the Muslim World. Berlin: Klaus Schwarz, 2014.
McGregor, Richard J.A. Sanctity and Mysticism in Medieval Egypt: The Wafa Sufi Order and the Legacy of Ibn ‘Arabi. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2012.
Mill, John Stuart. On Liberty, ed. Edward Alexander. Peterborough, ON: Broadview, 1999.
Mittermaier, Amira. Dreams that Matter: Egyptian Landscapes of the Imagination. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011.
Ohlander, Erik S. “Al-Junayd al-Baghdādī: Chief of the Sect,” in Lloyd Ridgeon (ed.), Routledge Handbook on Sufism. Abingdon: Routledge, 2021.
Reichmuth, Stefan. The World of Murtad}ā al-Zabīdī (1732-91): Life, Networks and Writings. Oxford: Gibb Memorial Trust, 2009.
Ricci, Ronit. Islam Translated: Literature, Conversion, and the Arabic Cosmopolis of South and Southeast Asia. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011.
Rudnyckyj, Daromir. Spiritual Economies: Islam, Globalization, and the Afterlife of Development. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2010.
Salem, Feryal. The Emergence of Early Sufi Piety and Sunnī Scholasticism: ʿAbdallāh b. al-Mubārak and the Formation of Sunnī Identity in the Second Islamic Century. Leiden: Brill, 2016.
Scott, David. Conscripts of Modernity: The Tragedy of Colonial Enlightenment. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004.
Seesemann, Rüdiger. The Divine Flood: Ibrahim Niasse and the Roots of a Twentieth-Century Sufi Revival. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.
Sevea, Teren. Miracles and Material Life: Rice, Ore, Traps and Guns in Islamic Malaya. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020.
Sirriyeh, Elizabeth. Dreams & Visions in the World of Islam: A History of Muslim Dreaming and Foreknowing. London: I. B. Tauris, 2015.
Taneja, Anand V. Jinnealogy: Time, Islam, and Ecological Thought in the Medieval Ruins of Delhi. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2018.
Thum, Rian. The Sacred Routes of Uyghur History. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2014.
Weismann, Itzchak. Taste of Modernity: Sufism, Salafiyya, and Arabism in Late Ottoman Damascus. Leiden: Brill, 2001.
Wymann-Landgraf, Umar F. Abd-Allah. Mālik and Medina: Islamic Legal Reasoning in the Formative Period. Leiden: Brill, 2013.
Žižek, Slavoj. The Ticklish Subject: The Absent Centre of Political Ontology. London: Verso, 1999.