The Islamic Secular

The basic point of the secular in the modern West is to "liberate" certain pursuits--the state, the economy, science--from the authority of religion. This is also assumed to be the goal and meaning of "secular" in Islam. Sherman Jackson argues, however, that that assumption is wrong. In Islam the "secular" was neither outside "religion" nor a rival to it. "Religion," in Islam was not identical to Islam's "sacred law," or "shari'ah." Nor did classical Muslim jurists see shari'ah as the all-encompassing, exclusive means of determining what is "Islamic." In fact, while, as religion, Islam's jurisdiction was unlimited, shari'ah's jurisdiction, as a sacred law, was limited. In other words, while everything remained within the purview of the divine gaze of the God of Islam, not everything could be determined by shari'ah or on the basis of its revelatory sources. Various aspects of state-policy, the economy, science, and the like were "differentiated," from shari'ah and its revelatory sources, without becoming non-religious or un-Islamic. Given the asymmetry between the circumference of shari'ah and that of Islam as religion, not everything that fell outside the former fell outside the latter. In other words, an idea or action could be non-shar'i (not dictated by shari'ah) without being non-Islamic, let alone anti-Islam. The ideas and actions that fall into this category are what Jackson terms "the Islamic Secular."