Applying the Canon in Islam: The Authorization and Maintenance of Interpretive Reasoning in Ḥanafī Scholarship (Toward Comparative Phil (Dis)) - Hardcover

Wheeler, Brannon M.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0791429733 ISBN 13: 9780791429730

Publisher: State University of New York Press, 1996

Synopsis

Using examples from Islamic law, Ndembu divination, and Aranda religion, this book argues how the notion of "canon" is used to authorize and maintain certain types of interpretive reasoning and the social institutions that employ them. The bulk of the book outlines how the Hanafi school of Islamic law was able to legitimize itself by extending the canonical authority of the Quran to the Sunnah of the Prophet, the opinions of selected local authorities, and the scholarship of earlier generations. The Hanafi example shows that the application of canon is not about overcoming the limits of a "closed" text but rather about imposing limits on a range of interpretations made possible by a variegated and malleable textual corpus.

About this title

About the Author

Brannon Wheeler is the founding Director of the Center for Middle East and Islamic Studies and Professor of History at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis. He received his PhD in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations from the University of Chicago and has been a visiting scholar at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies, the College of Shariah and Islamic Studies at Kuwait University, the Center for Middle East and Islamic Studies at the University of Bergen in Norway, and the American University of Kuwait. Prof. Wheeler has authored and edited seven books and is Editor of the book series and journal of Comparative Islamic Studies.

From the Back Cover

"This is an exellent survey of the Islamic legal tradition of the early Hanafi school, from the viewpoint of scriptural interpretation and canonical authority. This is arguable a centrally important topic for Islamic studies. It brings a much-needed theoretical application of categories developed for the history of religions to a subject that is well-known only to a few specialists." Carl W. Ernst, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Edition details

• Publisher: State University of New York Press
• Publication date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0791429733
• ISBN 13: 9780791429730
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 324