On reading shaīṭibī in rabat and tunis

Abstract

The ethical turn in Islamic jurisprudence known as the "maqāṣidī turn" has captured the imagination of many twentieth-and twenty-first-century practitioners and writers on Islamic law. Few places can rival debates related to "the purposes of the Sharī‘a" than North African thinkers, scholars, and philosophers who have spilt much ink on this topic for more than a century in order to provide blueprints for the reconstruction and reform of Muslim moral philosophy. From Muhammad al-Tahir bin ‘Ashur (1879-1973) of Tunisia to ‘Allah al-Fassi (1910-1974) of Morocco in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, to the contemporary Aḥmad al-Raysuni (b. 1953) and several others, there have been scholars who voiced their opinion and support for this new trend of reading Islamic law. But the debate on the purposes of the Sharīa has also enjoyed a trans-regional dimension as thinkers from Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and from the Indo-Pakistan subcontinent periodically weighed in along with scholars based in Europe and North America whose voices approve, disapprove, or exhibit caution on this trend. Recently, however, philosophers have engaged Shāi too, and this chapter will address their take on the topic.