Machine summary:
Sherman Jackson (University of Southern California) “Beyond Halal, Sharia, and the Challenge of the Islamic Secular.
He then discussed opinions related to whether good or evil can be known in the absence of revelation, the “Islamic secular,” and how a single-minded focus on ijtihād, including a focus on maqāṣid, misses the point because they do not address the non-shar‘ī realm.
Humeira Iqtidar (Kings College) and Mohammad Fadel (University of Toronto) served as discussants.
Mohsen Kadivar’s (Duke University) “Shari‘ah and Secularization: Two Challenges for Islamic Re- form” centered on “What is Sharia?” If it is values and virtues rather than law, the this problem is resolved, for the Qur’an calls itself the book of light not the book of rules.
Ovamir Anjum asked, during his”Can Islamic Tradi- tion Define Secularism on Its Own Terms?” presented a “simple translation”: dunyawīyah, or this-worldism.
Doha Abdelgawad (University of Warwick) used her “The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood: Secularization of Discourse and Intellectual Deficiency” to relate the political failure of the Muslim Broth- erhood in 2013 to the analysis of Oliver Roy (the MB suffered from a crisis of imagination) and Asad Barat (the crisis would lead to a post-Islamist reac- tion to create a neutral state).
He discussed the Islamist attention to state power, “illiberal state democracy,” Hallaq’s view that the Islamic state is essentially moral and the modern state is essentially political by a close reading of the Hamas charter.