This is a thought-provoking map of the forgotten history of the metes and bounds of sharmia, and a tour through the perpetual space beyond it. Each encounter involves an interpretive endeavor, both inside and beyond Islamic law's jurisdiction. Beyond it, encounters are both religious and secular whenever Muslims ethically seek to solve societal challenges in governance and even law (or anything else), in ways that proceed, according to Dr. Jackson, 'under the conscious awareness of the divine gaze.' True, these encounters require constant deliberation and reconsideration. But they promise better answers in both bounded spaces of Islamic law and expansive spaces of the 'Islamic secular.' It is a tour worth taking.
Sherman A. Jackson is King Faisal Chair of Islamic Thought and Culture and Professor of Religion and American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California. Prior to that, he spent many years at the University of Michigan's Department of Middle East Studies. He is the author of numerous books, including Islamic Law and the State: The Constitutional Jurisprudence of Shihab al-Din al-Qarafi (E.J. Brill, 1996), Islam and the Blackamerican: Looking Toward the Third Resurrection (OUP 2005), Islam and the Problem of Black Suffering (OUP 2009), and Sufism for Non-Sufis: Ibn 'Ata' Allah al-Sakandari's Taj al-'Arus (OUP 2012).
