American Journal of Islam and Society Vol 38 No 3-4.indb 2 Editorial Note On May 2-5, 2021, as the world stood humbled by COVID-19—the small- est of God’s creation that has humbled the mightiest—over a dozen Muslim scholars spent a portion of the Blessed Days of Ramadan in a virtual AJIS symposium. The meeting, titled “Theory and Uses of Maqāṣid al-Sharī‘a” was inaugurated by a keynote address by the senior contem- porary Muslim jurist and leading commentator on the Maqāṣid discourse, Dr. Mohammad Hashim Kamali. That thoughtful presentation is being reproduced here as a fitting introduction to this collection of articles. In this brief introductory note, I provide a summary of the presentations in the symposium before turning the reader over to our learned jurist’s critical appraisal of where the maqāṣid discourse stands today. Starting with the familiar history of the maqāṣid (wise purposes or objectives) of Islamic law, Dr. Kamali laments the prolonged marginaliza- tion of maqāṣid by the premodern uṣūl al-fiqh and hails the recent revival of the discourse in the latter part of the twentieth century. He suggests that the discourse was revived, not invented, because its intimations could be found in Islamic scripture and the early practice. Instead of trying to ratio- nally understand what the law is trying to do, classical jurists developed a sophisticated discourse on what the divine law is, how to derive it from the divine sources, and how to manage mutual disagreements in a discourse that came to be known as the uṣūl al-fiqh. He reflects on how classical field of uṣūl relates to the modern maqāṣid. Are the two complementary, or does the new discourse need to free itself from the shackles of the old? The most interesting part of Dr. Kamali’s essay may be the final observations, where the confidence and exhortation of the first part gives E d i t O R i A L N O t E  3 way to some misgivings, which were given even clearer expression in the question-and-answer session that followed his delivered remarks. Dr. Kamali’s actionable recommendations that follow at the end paint the picture of a discourse that needs to rein in its “arbitrariness”, that suffers from frequent and imprecise overuse, and that is in tension with the classical legal tradition of uṣūl. Despite the generally sanguine and compassionate tone with which Dr. Kamali presents and critiques the present state of the field, it is clear that he too agrees with the many less charitable critics of the maqāṣid discourse, namely that it has failed to mature in crucial ways. The case studies he cites do not inspire much confidence. In one of the exemplary cases he offers, the maqāṣid-friendly jurist Shaykh Yusuf al-Qaradawi favors reversing the classically agreed-on norm that Muslim and non-Muslim do not mutually inherit (that is, under the agreed-on rule, they would lose their inheritance share from a non-Muslim relative were they to convert). The “objective” al-Qarad- awi offers as rationale for his intervention is incentivizing conversion to Islam of someone who stands to inherit from their non-Muslim rel- ative. But, to be clear, the prohibition on the Muslim inheriting from the non-Muslim does not destroy wealth, rather simply rearranges it; and one can easily imagine cases when it would be the prohibition that favors conversion to Islam (for instance, if the deceased relation were Muslim). The benefit of protecting wealth would be a more plausible rationale for this opinion if the inheritance were permitted only in one direction (to the benefit of Muslims), as Shaykh al-Qaradawi’s second alternative ijtihad suggests. But what exactly is the basis of this new opinion: maqāṣid or simply a reformist uṣūl that permits accepting existing minority opinions? If the ijtihād itself is based on preferring a minority opinion, as al-Qaradawi sug- gests, then it is not clear what role the maqāṣid play in effecting the legal change in question. Consider a purer use of the purpose-oriented law, one in which the existing scriptural norms are overturned by the force of the maqāṣid. Assuming that preservation of wealth is a valid purpose (whose wealth, maqāṣid discourse does not tell us), someone simply refusing to pay one’s loans or other dues to non-Muslims would fulfil this purpose in 4  A M E R i C A N J O U R N A L O F i S L A M A N d S O C i E t Y 3 8 : 3 - 4 the same way. But such a reasoning would count as simply fraud or theft under old Islamic law. If the maqāṣid discourse is interested in overturning inconvenient scriptural norms for supposed scriptural purposes, how far is it willing to go? Our admittedly rudimentary investigation suggests that, far from giving a convincing instance when the maqāṣid method can be fruitfully used, this case instantiates what critics might call a casual dis- regard for both scriptural texts and the classical legal norms, and indeed leaves one to wonder how to reliably and objectively differentiate good purposive reasoning from crass utilitarianism. As this very example illus- trates, the problem might not be with the idea of purposes in the law but the result-oriented way in which it is at times applied. The papers presented in the symposium furthered some of the recommendations and critiques that Dr. Kamali intimated. Dr. Aasim Padela’s “Maqāṣidī Models for an ‘Islamic’ Medical Ethics: Problem- Solving or Confusing at the Bedside?” brought the author’s extensive engagement with the maqāṣid-based approaches to bear on the questions he confronts as a Muslim physician and bioethics scholar. Dr. Thahir Jamal Kiliyamannil explored the deployment of the maqāṣid discourse by India’s Islamic movements. Dr. Sami al-Daghistani suggested how the discourse on Islamic economics might benefit from an ethical, Ghazalian Sufi perspective. David Drennan focused on the intellectual life of the great pioneering text on the maqāṣid, Imam al-Shatibi’s al-Muwāfaqāt, by tracing out Mauritanian commentaries on the text at the turn of the twentieth century—thus challenging the notion that the text or the maqāṣid discourse it inaugurated remained forgotten until contemporary reformists brought it to light. Sh. Ahmed Khater’s presentation proposed that Ibn Taymiyya already employed a notion of maqāṣid in his own way, which may explain his departure from the dominant strains in the four jurisprudential schools on certain issues. Mohammad Mehdi Ali offered a philosophical critique of the maqāṣid discourse by deploying American legal philosopher Ronald Dworkin’s concept of law as integrity, rather than a pragmatic instrument, as modern advocates of maqāṣid seem to presuppose. All of these thoughtful papers, although not yet ready for publication, added much depth to the symposium and generated earnest commentary and discussion. E d i t O R i A L N O t E  5 Included in this issue are three papers from the symposium. The first is Dr. Yomna Helmy’s paper “From Islamic Modernism to Theorizing Authoritarianism,” which probes how the maqāṣid discourse, developed by Islamic reformists and modernists, has been deployed against its grain to bolster authoritarianism and sabotage the purposes of the law. The crucial observation in her paper is the distinction between the “objec- tives” or wise purposes of the law and the result-oriented, self-serving fashion by which it has been put to use by the spokespersons for author- itarian agendas in the Middle East. The second article is Dr. Youcef Soufi’s “Before Maqāṣid: Recovering the Contested Vision of Benefit (maṣlaḥa) in Islamic Law,” which explores the discourse on human benefit (maṣlaḥa) within the classical Shafi‘i school and demonstrates how it already played a central role in the interpretation of scripture. It thus offers an alternative to more recent but perhaps hasty approaches to maqāṣid, an alternative that not only has a deep pedigree within the Islamic tradition but that also promotes the democratization of discussions over the benefits of the law. The third article, which nicely complements the other two, is Rezart Beka’s “Maqāṣid and the Renewal of Uṣūl al-Fiqh in Abdallah Bin Bayyah’s Discourse.” This article meticulously presents one con- temporary scholar’s attempt to trace the genealogy of the maqāṣid. In the process, it uncovers the deep conceptual anachronisms and intel- lectual moves that enable the “result-oriented” jurisprudence diagnosed in Helmy’s paper, and the absence of the democratization hoped for in Soufi’s. Ovamir Anjum Editor, American Journal of Islam and Society Imam Khattab Endowed Chair of Islamic Studies Professor, Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies Affiliated Faculty, Department of History University of Toledo, Toledo, OH doi: 10.35632/ajis.v38i3-4.3109