Ok, lets have a small reflection on “Sharīʿa is comprehensive in ethical cosmology” versus “Sharīʿa covers every aspect of life”
As the Sharīʿa provides both specific and general ritual and ethical guidelines, almost every aspect of life can be ritualized or moralized. 1/
As the Sharīʿa provides both specific and general ritual and ethical guidelines, almost every aspect of life can be ritualized or moralized. 1/
It is not that the Sharīʿa covers every aspect of life from a legal perspective, but it is because of its ethical guidelines that almost every aspect can be brought into its scope. It is therefore specific on a limited amount of life aspects,…2/
…but it is comprehensive due to the ethical cosmology which it provides the believer. But this comprehensiveness is a moral obligation placed on the human, humans are responsible to bring Sharīʿa ethics into every aspect of their lives, also matters which the Sharīʿa…3/
…sources do not discuss or is legally agnostic about (matters which are mubāḥ/generally allowed by essence). This obligation to bring everything into the Islamic ethical cosmology is because humans are obligated to approach all matters from a deontological (duty) ethics,…4/
…ensuring both moral means and ends. But in modern discourse we see this claim a lot, the “Sharīʿa covers every aspect of life”, “Islam is a complete way of life”. This claim is made both from an ideological and apologetic aspect, which I call the saturation argument. 5/
(which Shepard labeled “Islamic Totalism”). This saturation argument is very popular, i.e. Islam saturates daily life more than other religions/secularized worldviews. This can be both be made as an apologetic claim from a Muslim perspective, or as an accusation from an…6/
…Islamophobic perspective (“creeping Sharia”). The saturation argument doesn’t make any sense from a classical premodern sense of “religion” as every major religion saturated daily life with its ritual and ethical cosmology. The saturation argument in modern discourse..7/
…in a sense fulfills an anti-secularization narrative whereby “Islam” saturates life more than for example Western Protestantism. In classical Islamic apologetics this was not the way Islam was promoted. It was promoted through its philosophy of religion and the way ethics…8/
…were grounded in its theology and philosophy of law. The point is, we have allowed Islamic apologetics to be reduced to the saturation argument with this false and very voluntaristic “complete way of life” narrative (i.e. that God “rules” over every aspect). 9/
We must return to classical Kalāmic apologetics, i.e. Islam is the most logical and ethically satisfying religion. The saturation argument responds to the “numistic emptiness” of modern secular life, i.e. Islam as a religious mindset (as sustained by multiple daily rituals) 10/
..fills up life that previously was experienced as being “empty/devoid” of meaning, and provides multiple rulings whereby man does not roam “unguided”. This idea of Islam having a say in every aspect of life, whereby this “having a say” is viewed as if all of these rulings..11/
…are found in its revelation (voluntarism or divine command theory), misrepresents Islam as a closed off system (i.e. “Islam is eternal, can not be changed”. But Islam can have a say in so many aspects of life is because of its rational and ethical hermeneutics 12/
(i.e. the comprehensiveness of its ethical cosmology) which is technically grounded in revelational (i.e. scripture) and traditional-communal (maṣlaḥa/ijmāʿ) frameworks, and is from a classical perspective very adaptive and open-ended (thus not closed off). 13/
That totality is not filled by revelation as in legal rulings, but by an ethical hermeneutics derived from a revelational focus (such as the maqāṣid). But this false sense of legal totality is how Islam is “sold” to both Muslims and non-Muslims,… 14/
…that it is a counter-ideology for both secularized religions and secularized political systems (neoliberal democracy, communism etc.), while in reality it can incorporate or work with those political systems through its ethical cosmology. 15/
Classically, Islam as a religion was promoted based on how logical and humanistic it was, i.e. through its philosophy of religion and ethics, but we have lost both Islam as an ethical and rational hermeneutics as well as our narrative in how we present Islam. 16/end of rant
This is why voluntarism/divine command theory adherents are generally amoral, they reject any form of moral reasonableness and are stuck in a moral Romanticism they believe is Scriptual, but is in reality just 1950’s rural America of WASP patriarchy and xenophobia.
In his Adāb al-Qāḍī, al-Khaṣṣāf (d. 877CE) says penal punishments can’t be applied when testimonies are based on translations, as proof requires direct knowledge of the words spoken, otherwise this violates the human rights (Ḥuqūq) of the defendant.
16th century manuscript of al-Nasafī’s philosophy of law (uṣūl al-Fiqh) text, Sharḥ al-Manār. A text we study at @InfoIRTIS with @MuftiAMohammed with the supercommentary by Mullājīvan. 
