The Anthropology of Islamic Law by Nakissa Aria;

Author:Nakissa, Aria;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press USA - OSO
Published: 2019-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

III. Written Texts as a Medium for the Transmission of Knowledge

Islamicist scholarship recognizes that during the first two centuries after the Prophet’s death, knowledge of Sharīʿa rules was largely learned through practice. Put differently, each new generation learned how to follow the Sunna (i.e., practice of Sharīʿa rules) by observing and imitating the previous generation.27 However, it is typically supposed that this form of learning died out once the Prophet’s teachings were inscribed in written compilations of Hadith reports. Having recorded the Sunna, Muslims thenceforth relied on written texts.28 They no longer learned how to follow the Sunna by observation and imitation.

But as we have seen, Traditionalist Muslim scholars hold that throughout history, and up until this day, knowledge of Sharīʿa rules is transmitted through practice. In other words, up until this day, people still learn how to follow the Sunna (i.e., practice Sharīʿa rules) through observation and imitation. Why do many Islamicists insist otherwise? Here it is useful to draw on the linguistic anthropological concept of “language ideology.”29 To put matters in very simple terms, a language ideology consists in a set of assumptions about what language is and how it operates. Anthropological research on language ideologies has established that they vary widely from culture to culture.30 Hence, in trying to isolate the language ideology (or range of language ideologies) found among premodern Muslim scholars, we cannot assume that they are similar to those found in the contemporary West. Indeed, it would be a startling coincidence if they were the same. After all, it is widely recognized that contemporary Western notions of language have been thoroughly transformed by exposure to print and electronic mass media31—phenomena which are obviously absent from premodern Muslim history.

A defining feature of contemporary Western language ideologies is their tendency to assume that all knowledge is possible to express and communicate in words, including written words (i.e., texts). Accordingly, such ideologies conceive of writing as an ideal and more or less self-sufficient vehicle for the transmission of knowledge over time. Consequently, these ideologies customarily assume that the introduction of writing inevitably leads to the decline, and eventual replacement, of other ways of transmitting knowledge.32 Nevertheless, the assumption of such universal evolutionary routes has been undermined by myriad studies establishing that different societies react to the introduction of writing in different ways.33 With this in mind, it cannot be taken for granted that efforts to record the Sunna in writing after the Prophet’s death precipitated the end of transmission through practice. Why couldn’t transmission by practice have continued to exist side by side with writing?34 Craig Calhoun has observed that such patterns of dual transmission existed not only in premodern Muslim societies but in their Indian, Chinese, and European counterparts as well.35

Automatically foreclosing the possibility of dual transmission would only make sense if Muslims believed writing itself to be a sufficient medium for transmitting knowledge. Nevertheless, it has been noted that such contemporary Western perspectives are “exactly the reverse” of premodern Muslim views.36 While Muslim authorities freely

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