ABSTRACT

Today, one third of the world’s Muslim population lives in countries where they constitute a minority. This situation in itself is not new. Muslims have experienced minority life since the early years of Islam. The first wave of Muslim immigration to Abyssinia (614–615 CE) is a case in point. Due to political and territorial struggle, Muslims also had minority experiences in places like Spain, Sicily, the Balkans, China and India. This long history of minority experience did not result – on the part of early and pre-modern jurists – in the formulation of a concrete jurisprudential position towards minority Muslim communities. 1 Instead, earlier jurists tended to address questions about Muslims living outside the world of Islam as individual cases. They did not systematically or thematically group these questions or work out a methodology to deal with them. Jurists did not feel the need, in their writings and debates, to address the notion of developing constructive Muslim minority life. This does not mean that their debates were superficial or insignificant. Rather they were complex and diverse. Jurists of various schools discussed various ‘minority’ questions and projected different positions based on their geopolitical setting and juridical orientations. They debated the rulings pertaining to immigration, definition of dārs, i.e. land (both dār al-Islām and dār al-ḥarb), the boundaries of Islamic jurisdiction, the limitations of manifesting one’s religion and the role of amān, i.e. contracts that guarantee the safety of the individuals, in defining Muslims’ relation to the non-Muslim territory. Khaled Abou El Fadl argues that there are three main questions that the juristic debate pertaining to Muslims residing in non-Muslim polities focused upon: Were Muslims permitted to reside in a non-Muslim territory? Were Muslim minorities part of the Muslim Umma or did they constitute a special class of Muslims? What were the obligations of Muslim minorities towards Islamic Law, and towards their host states? These questions are discussed within the framework of four key issues: 1) residence in a non-Muslim land; 2) ability to practise Islam, especially rituals; 3) jurisdiction; and 4) interaction with non-Muslims. Definitely, these three questions have driven the debate with all its complexities and other sub-issues throughout Islamic legal history up until the present time.