Reflecting at the Dihliz

As we reach the concluding pages of Modern Challenges, the vantage point from where I stand at the dihliz enables me to look back at the ground covered and offer some reflections. My vantage point has opened up for me panoramic views of wide-ranging pluralities within the Islamic legal traditions, especially when I have looked through the lens of culture and tradition. When I have shifted my sightline to look from a Western and a global angle, I have been able to see the multiple challenges and opportunities posed to Islamic law and sharia by tradition and modernity.

The dihliz, this in-between place, is both interior and exterior to the traditions I have sought to explore. Critically placed at the intersection of overlapping discourses and intellectual universes, the dihliz has for me facilitated insights into various texts and interpretations and cultural frameworks. Privileged to have grown up with multiple identities and languages, and with lived experiences from Muslim-majority and non-Muslim jurisdictions, crossing and negotiating boundaries has always come naturally to me. At times and places where civilizations and cultures meet, interact and are transformed, language and terminology assume a great importance. The richness and depth of the Islamic traditions, steeped in so many cultures, can only be captured by listening to ‘linguistic communities’ other than those of the academy. The vital and living oral traditions of Muslim communities continue to inform the day-to-day dynamics of the Islamic legal traditions, and they cannot remain unheeded.

Poised at the dihliz, I conceptualized the sharia as a flowing stream composed of varying currents – intertwined, dynamic, vibrant, and responsive to changing place and time.