Radical Separation of Powers

Two centuries of Orientalist scholarship have denied that Islam has a constitutional concept. Premodern Islamic political practice has been subject to mistranslation, misinterpretation and condescension through the eyes of colonisers, and judged inferior to the norms of Western liberalism. Wael Hallaq, a leading scholar of Islamic law, sets the record straight in this groundbreaking volume. Traumatised by the tyranny of absolute monarchies, Europe came to see in Islam everything that it despised about itself. By seeking to understand Islamic governance from within its own tradition of reason, Hallaq reveals premodern Islam to have a rich and distinctive constitutional tradition: starting from the individual as a political subject up to the power of executives.

Author Biography

Wael B. Hallaq is the Avalon Foundation Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University. He is a leading authority in Islamic law,  and has published widely on legal theory, Orientalism and the critical problems of modernity. His previous books include Restating Orientalism and The Impossible State.