Non-reformists’ reform in the Age of Modernity: the development of Islamic ethico-legal theory in nineteenth-century Egypt

Abstract

This thesis seeks to rethink the history of scholars of Islamic law in nineteenth-century Egypt, a group, time, and place which have all been viewed as static, rigid, and stagnant. I mainly have two objectives.

Firstly, to reconsider the history of the so-called conservative Islamic law scholars in that purported period of decline, and to bring attention to their reforming efforts which were distinct from the linear process of modernisation. The second objective is to show how this reform engendered the development of Islamic ethico-legal theory. I concentrate on the reform of Islamic legal theory, as broadly understood, and how this reform can be placed in conversation with contemporary questions of ethics, power, social structure, jurists’ subjectivity, and critical theory.