Jayzames

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Thanks,

Sharia article undergoing drastic restructuring, we need a time out to more fully discuss

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It's been a real education

Regards, Aquib

Sharia

I've stuck my oar in at the Sharia article and on the talk page but I think I might be doing more harm than good there. Let me know if you want any citations checked though, as I can get access to most academic material if required.

All the best. –Syncategoremata (talk) 11:43, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

please see here before you continue with "Sharia"

please see here before you continue [1] google books pg 7

thanx J8079s (talk) 03:22, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, I will be using this. I plan to get to liberal, non-mainstream interpretations of Sharia eventually, I just want to flush the reality distorted "Salafi apologetics" out of this article first. Jayzames (talk) 04:23, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Law articles behind some of the comparisons in the Sharia article

I've had a brief look through the following two articles that are used in the comparison of Sharia law with the US constitution and the English common law respectively, and both make roughly the comparison that the Sharia article claims they do (but I am utterly untrained in law so may be missing their point entirely). In particular, the al-Hibri article seems to stop short of making any claim of influence of Sharia law on the US constitution, despite the provocative title.

al-Hibri, Azizah Y. (1999). "Islamic and American Constitutional Law: Borrowing Possibilities Or a History of Borrowing?" (PDF). University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law. 1 (3): 492–527.

Makdisi, John A (1998). "The Islamic Origins of the Common Law". North Carolina Law Review. 77: 1635–1740. ISSN 0029-2524.

The first of these is publicly accessible but let me know if there is anything in the Makdisi article you'd like me to check.

All the best.–Syncategoremata (talk) 23:11, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

I think the Hibri article is too flimsy, low quality, and polemical to be usable here to claim any family tree between sharia and US law. It relies on speculation and unfalsifiable claims, including the possibility that house slaves might have been Muslim, as well as spurious and trivial similarities between the Islamic rejection of the trinity and Jefferson's very different Enlightenment era Deist and Unitarian religious views. It avoids mentioning Jefferson's actual, less positive, historically documented contact with Muslims. It makes questionable claims in nearly every paragraph, "Muslims have neither clergy nor ecclesiastical authorities," when the ulema in fact fill this position; and presentist assertions like "the Quran encourages ethnic and other diversity," when 49:13 the verse in question doesn't quite say this, and begs the question of bid'a. I think this piece is more about Islamic apologetics and theology than law. Also, it's been cited only five times. Making such a major claim needs a better source than this so I think we can delete this paragraph safely.Jayzames (talk) 01:04, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Back on Westlaw again, so eventually I will be going through more of the sources if I can, will ask if I need something.Jayzames (talk) 06:55, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

It shows how little work I've done in this area that I plainly cannot judge what is of sufficient value or interest for an article such as the Sharia one, where you have a much better grip on what would be appropriate. I've just caught up with your comments at Talk:Sharia which seem thoroughly reasonable and well argued to me (if put rather more forcefully than I would have done, but you are probably in the right with your tone as well).

It's good to hear that you've regained access to the relevant material and I look forward to seeing a re-invigorated Shariah article.

All the best. –Syncategoremata (talk) 20:05, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Sharia, Corporations, and Universities

Hi,

Given your legal expertise, could you look at article University, especially as it relates to University#Medieval universities. I recently saw in the article on Sharia that "Sharia ... never developed the concept of a legal person, or corporation," while the traditional defining characteristic of Universities is that they were corporations of masters (or of students) that were recognized as autonomous self-governing corporations, as legal persons able to make contracts, sue, and be sued. Yet there is a recurring attempt to claim that educational institutions in the Islamic world were universities. This seems somewhat inconsistent and any edits or comments would be welcome. --SteveMcCluskey (talk) 03:37, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

Not really in possession of "legal expertise," but here goes anyway. I just used Timur Kuran's The Absence of the Corporation in Islamic Law, and I can refer you to the talk page of Dialectric and a discussion with the user Imperfectly informed where they discuss the issue more knowledgeably than I could. Kuran clearly states the Roman origin of the corporation and its gradual development over the following centuries, and explains everything in detail regarding the lack of the corporate form of organization in the premodern Middle East.

The closest thing to a corporation in classical sharia is the waqf, basically the same thing as a trust fund, i.e. the "trustor" (for example a rich parent) gives money or property to the "trustee" (for example rich kid), and gets to impose conditions on the use of the money or property (for example "he only gets the money when he's 25," "he loses it all if he marries outside the religion"). Foundations and charitable trusts work on this principle, i.e a wealthy benefactor donates money with specific conditions as to its use. I have to read up more, but the waqf and the trust are close enough to make the idea of borrowing in this case, not implausible, but that's another issue.

Trusts have certain disadvantages vis-a-vis corporations, as noted by Kuran:

These are visible in contrasting the colleges established in the Middle East as waqf-financed madrasas with those founded contemporaneously in the West as universities. The early universities of Europe, such as Paris (1180) and Oxford (1249), were founded as trusts resembling the waqf.50 But they quickly became self-governing and self-renewing organizations through incorporation. By contrast, madrasas continued to be constrained by the directives of their founders. Over time, therefore, the curriculum changed less in madrasas than in universities, helping to turn the Middle East into an intellectual backwater

If you consider legal personhood to be a non-negotiable characteristic in defining a "university," then no, there were no universities in the premodern Islamic world. Al Azhar in Cairo, however, frequently lays claim to being the oldest. There are various reasons, typically double taxation for corporations; versus the threat of the repo man making a personal visit (i.e. "liability"), that can make one form of organization better than another in different situations, but there's no doubting that legal personhood provides many advantages for larger organizations that want to do complex things.Jayzames (talk) 06:53, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

In fact George Makdisi (who I imagine is related to John Makdisi) in "Madrasa and University in the Middle Ages" says:

There is another fundamental reason why the university, as it developed in Europe, did not develop in the Muslim East. This reason is to be found in the very nature of the corporation. Corporations, as a form of social organization, had already developed in Europe. Their legal basis was to be found in Roman Law which recognized juristic persons. Islamic law, on the other hand, does not recognize juristic persons (1). It recognized the physical, natural person as the only juristic person; and therefore, a corporation, as a fictitious legal person, as an entity with interests recognized and secured by the law, as a group which, in the contemplation of the law, has an existence independent of its individual members, such an

entity is totally foreign to Islamic law and to the Islamic experience in the middle ages (a). Thus the university, as a form of social organization, was peculiar to medieval Europe. Later, it was exported to all parts of the world, including the Muslim East; and it has remained with us down to the present day. But back in the middle ages, outside of Europe, there was nothing anything quite like it anywhere.

Makdisi himself draws from Joseph Schacht. I think other Wikipedia users have also discussed this Makdisi article as a misuse of sources.Jayzames (talk) 07:36, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

This issue of trusts vs corporations is central to Huff's comparison of Islamic and the Christian West's education systems in his book:

Huff, Toby E. (2003). The Rise of Early Modern Science: Islam, China, and the West (2 ed.). Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521529945.

As I recall from reading the first edition of this book, he makes exactly the same points as you have quoted from Kuran and Makdisi above. The entire book is well-worth reading if you have any interest in this area.

All the best. –Syncategoremata (talk) 10:33, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the detailed discussion. I'm one of those medievalists who considers corporate organization to be the defining characteristic of a university. It gave the university the ability to defend its autonomy against civil authorities in religious courts (including Rome) and to defend itself against both civil and religious authorities by acting as an organized body with the legal ability to define its membership and impose its statutes on them. --SteveMcCluskey (talk) 14:17, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

Thanks also to Syncat for the reference to George Makdisi, "Madrasa and University in the Middle Ages," Studia Islamica 32 (1970): 255-264. From a quick skim his view of the medieval university, and its uniqueness in Europe, dovetails nicely with my understanding of the situation. I now have a copy on my hard drive. --SteveMcCluskey (talk) 14:33, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

Just went through Timur Kuran on corporations again, and I'm struck by one thing, that in contrast to the introduction of the printing press, which was actively suppressed by the Ottoman ulema in any language used by Muslims (it was permitted in languages used by Jews and Christians). This move was quite obviously done because more widespread literacy and availability of books would threaten the ulema franchise, and the rather flimsy religious justification for this included the possibility that type used to print the name of Allah would be cleaned with brushes made of pig bristles. In contrast, the corporate form of organization seems to have attracted no active religious condemnation, it just seems to have been ignored.Jayzames (talk) 09:14, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, Jayzames. You have new messages at Syncategoremata's talk page.
Message added 09:12, 28 May 2010 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

I've put a TL;DR reply on my talk page to this. Syncategoremata (talk) 09:12, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

Skype

You might note that at least one of your recent edits, such as the one you made to Law, also introduced some extraneous text around some numerical characters. This may be due to a combination of your browser and Skype trying to identify and highlight telephone numbers. Thank you.--Rumping (talk) 11:33, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

History of human rights

Hello Jayzames. I´ve noticed the excellent work you´ve done with the Sharia article. Before you came in it was a disaster, a flagrantly apologetical article. But as you may know, the scope of Jagged´s "contributions" is enourmous, and many more articles need a serious cleanup. I´ve noticed the History of human rights article faces similar problems. The islamic world section is an utter POV fest. Basically human rights were invented by Islam. Guess who´s the main contributor to the article? Jagged85

So, given that you have done such a great work in the sharia article, maybe you could take a look to this article and see what we can do. All the best --Knight1993 (talk) 03:47, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

I will make sure to take a look at it. I'm not completely finished with the sharia article yet and have used the cleanup there as the basis for despaminating the other law related articles, so I should be able to carry over what I've checked for the sharia article to the human rights article. I've tried to be thorough and check if any fringe seeming theory shows up in multiple sources and isn't just the view of a single person

Of course there are still problems with the sharia article as some people like it flagrantly apologetic. It being World Cup Weekend my Wikipedia enthusiasm has flagged a bit, but I'll probably be getting back to it soon.Jayzames (talk) 00:37, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

Yowza! I just looked at that section, it's the usual Jaggedized ultra-POV-fest! The community would be very grateful to you if you were to straighten it out post-World Cup. I also note you are having quite a few problems over at Sharia law, another POV-fest. Athenean (talk) 04:43, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

I would put it more as a nuisance (though any help is of course appreciated), from a user who mostly just lacks basic skills and comprehension of the goals of an encyclopedia as compared to preaching. He's stuffed the article with lots of pious cornbread, but I think it's mostly harmless at this point, and won't take nearly the effort to clean up and encyclopedia-tize (when the time comes) that it has taken to sift through the Jagged material.

For all the inconveniences that Jagged has inarguably caused, after having flipped through Jagged's contribution history on a huge number of articles, I do have to give him props for effort, for familiarity with lots of material, and for making (from what I can tell) worthwhile contributions provided they are unrelated to Islamic apologetics.

P.S., my sincere condolences about the terrible loss on Saturday.Jayzames (talk) 09:47, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

Actually, scratch that, apparently Jagged 85 has also been using proxy servers in addition to using a fixed IP address to get around his RFC. That's just too far even for me.Jayzames (talk) 01:13, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

Take a break

I suggest you take a break from Sharia. I realize there is more to do there but I think you are showing signs of "burnout". I have suggested the same to Aquib (talk). You've done a great job so far and the page is not yet encyclopedic you should try to circle around it and come back to it later. This is just my advice.J8079s (talk) 16:37, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

I've looked through a few other encyclopedias on this topic, and no, the page is not yet encyclopedic; most of my effort has gone to removing the jaggedisms rather than new content so it's still closer to an Islamic version of the Watchtower or Dianetics rather than say the Oxford Encyclopedia of Islam. It's World Cup Week, though so it probably is a good time to slow down on Wikipedia for a bit.Jayzames (talk) 01:43, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

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