Baber Johansen

Abstract
This paper attempts to analyze the relation between law and theology in
Islam. It focuses on the acts of worship that constitute a sphere of
transcendence, clearly distinguished from legal and social transactions
between humans. In this sphere of transcendence believers find a model for
embodied normative behavior meant to bring them closer to God. But
coming closer to God is not just the function of the cult; it also serves as a
model for social and legal behavior. It thus links the cult to the world of
inter-human relations. The cult and the links to God that it establishes are
integrated into a legal, not a theological framework. The author tries to
render this fact comprehensible through references to major Muslims
theologians and jurists of the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries who
systematically explain the relation between Islamic jurisprudence and
theology as a division of labor between a rational reconstruction of God’s
creation and a revelation-based legal norm derivation. The theoretical
framework of this paper is provided by the reflection on the tension between
contingent and non-contingent actors and norms.
Baber Johansen is Professor for Islamic Religious Studies at Harvard
Divinity School. Before coming to Harvard he taught as professor for
Islamic Studies in the Freie Universitaet Berlin and as Directeur d’études at
the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris. His main
research interest is the history and the present of Islamic law. His most
important publications are: Contingency in a Sacred Law: Legal and Ethical
Norms in the Muslim Fiqh (Brill, 1999); The Islamic Law on Land Tax and
Rent. The Peasants’ Loss of Property Rights as Interpreted in the Hanafite
Legal Literature of the Mamluk and Ottoman Periods (Croom Helm, 1988);
Islam und Staat. Abhängige Entwicklung, Verwaltung des Elends und
religiöser Anti-Imperialismus (Das Argument, 1982); Muhammad Husain
Haikal. Europa und der Orient im Weltbild eines ägyptischen Liberalen
(Steiner, 1967 ; Arabic translation: Kalima, 2010). He co-edited, with D.J.
Stewart and A. Singer, Law and Society in Islam (Markus Wiener Publisher,
1997); and with A. Havemann, Gegenwart als Geschichte.
Islamwissenschaftliche. Studien. Fritz Steppat zum fünfund-sechzigsten
Geburtstag (Brill, 1988). With David Powers and Aharon Layish he served
as editor of Islamic Law and Society (1994-2012).