Islam: A Guide for Jews and Christians - Electric Scotland

GOD’ S WAY t 183
modern Muslim states that required, or at least desired, some Islamic
underpinning for their reforming legislation. Thus, in 1957 Tunisia
passed a Law of Personal Status that argued that the Quran permitted
polygamy only if all the wives could be treated with absolute impartiality
and that this should be regarded as a precondition of a polygamous
union—a position never previously held by the ulama. Since
that was practically impossible, polygamy was declared illegal.
More recently, fundamentalist Muslims have likewise asserted the
right to ijtihad, though for very different ends from those envisioned
by the modernists.
Consensus on Moral Matters
Absent an authoritative defining authority on religious matters,
Muslims have often been troubled by the differing opinions offered
by the experts on moral questions. Just as often, the problem
has been resolved, eventually if not immediately, by consensus
(ijma), which is the often unacknowledged key to the sharia. It
arose of necessity from a system based on a revelation that was
closed by a single definitive event—the Prophet’s death—rather
than by community agreement, as happened in the case of the Jews
and Christians, who themselves signaled the end of the incremental
growth of their Scriptures by gradual but nonetheless effective
community consensus. The sudden closure of the Quran occurred
as the umma was beginning its astonishing growth into a community
linked by little else than monotheistic faith, possession of the
Arabic document that had proclaimed it, and certain ethnocultural
ties. The absence of detailed behavioral and institutional norms
was in part met by the equally astonishing growth of Prophetic
reports purporting to supply moral guidance from the Prophet’s
own example. As a legal instrument, the hadith soon collapsed
under their own weight. For ninth-century Muslims there were too
many to be convincing, just as for the modern non-Muslim they
are too good to be true. The attempt to reground the certitude of
the proliferation of Prophetic reports led to the canonical collec-