Carceral fiqh and the battle of the empty stomachs: Debates on the permissibility of hunger strikes

Abstract

This article employs an ethnographic approach—including legal ethnography and prison narratives—to examine the question of the permissibility of hunger strikes in Islam. In doing so, it assumes a dual source of authority, that of religious scholars on the one hand and the experiential authority of hunger strikers on the other. The article first introduces the metaphysics of confinement in which the prison imam acts as a technician of power in a larger system of coercion. Both prisoners and prison authorities use fatwā production as a means of forging legitimacy. The article then explores the religious justifications scholars provide to deem hunger strikes permissible or impermissible. This includes scriptural evidence (particularly debates around Qurʾan 2:195), the use of precedent and qiyās (deductive analogy), maqāṣid al-sharīʿa (objectives of Islamic law), and the larger context of the carceral system.