Baber Johansen

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most of them are acts of charity or acts considered to be useful for
members of society (e.g.: loans without interest).
Rather than using a theoretical concept, in this case deontology, in order
to establish a negative check-list denying the existence of an Islamic law,
Islamic cult, and Islamic ethics, we should focus on the complex
character of the notions through which Muslim scholars structure their
debates, the way in which the content of these categories develops over
the centuries and how the concept of social morality is distinguished
from the cult and at the same time related to the aspiration to come closer
to God. NawawÐ’s and SarakhsÐ’s texts on the acts of qurba that are
accessible to Muslims and non-Muslims may be keys to a better
understanding of the difference between cult and social morality. Ibn
ÝÀbidÐn’s statement that intellectual investigation on how to reach the
cognition of God should neither be considered a cultic act nor an act of
qurba, indicates that this jurist conceives of a space of intellectual
activity different from cultic acts and social morality. Deontology, while
often being a helpful theoretical tool for the analysis of one-sided
obligations is misleading when it is used as an overarching category that
denies the existence of law, cult, and ethics in Islam. If used in this way,
it renders unthinkable many of the complex structures of Muslim law,
ritual, and ethics. 72
VI.2: Theology and law: a division of labor
In the secondary literature one comes occasionally across the assumption
that Islamic law is a theological discipline. 73 In the source texts of
Islamic law one can often see how legal scholars take their distance from
a theological approach to the law. This distancing does not necessarily
imply a rejection of theology. The most systematic analyses of this
relation base the division of labor between the two disciplines on the
differences in methods and competencies and on the criterion of
specialization and expertise.