Description
The basic point of the secular in the modern West is to liberate certain pursuits--the state, the economy, science--from the authority of religion. This is also assumed to be the goal and meaning of secular in Islam. Sherman Jackson argues, however, that that assumption is wrong. In Islam the secular was neither outside religion nor a rival to it. Religion, in Islam was not identical to Islam''s sacred law, or shari''ah. Nor did classical Muslim jurists see shari''ah as the all-encompassing, exclusive means of determining what is Islamic. In fact, while, as religion, Islam''s jurisdiction was unlimited, shari''ah''s jurisdiction, as a sacred law, was limited. In other words, while everything remained within the purview of the divine gaze of the God of Islam, not everything could be determined by shari''ah or on the basis of its revelatory sources. Various aspects of state-policy, the economy, science, and the like were differentiated, from shari''ah and its revelatory sources, without
