Iqtisaduna

"This book was published in 1959-61 by a young scholar who proved to be the ‘prize of the Islamic university’, as Khumaini called him when he learnt of his execution, aged 45, by Saddam Hussein in April 1980. My first serious book was on Sadr’s views on the constitution, the economic system and banking (The Renewal of Islamic Law, 1993). He was then pretty much unknown outside Shi’ite circles, and so very much a maverick on the world scene. Now Sadr City, named after him, is home to perhaps a quarter to a half of Baghdad’s population. Sadr is, in my view, the greatest Islamic thinker of the 20th century, and he reshaped the whole field of Islamic law away from the monstrous idea of it, held by Eastern and Western ignoramuses alike. Iqtisaduna is the greatest illustration of Sadr’s aggiornamento – bringing up to date – of classical Islamic law. Islamic law is associated with lapidating the adulteress and beheading criminals – and it is arguably this to some extent, but only if you reject all that is good in it to focus just on these, which, like slavery in American law, I call ‘acid tests’. You’ll find outrageous rules, of course, in the texts, but what Sadr did was to take out the extreme legacy of Islamic law and interpret the world with the better part of it. It’s an immense work, some 30 books, of which Iqtisaduna is the most innovative. He fails to provide a fully functioning new theory, I think. But he offers the tools for thinking about and using traditional ways to recreate a decent, forward-looking world. In the Muslim world Sadr epitomises systemic renewal and enlightenment. Well, when land redistribution was a major problem he went back to Islamic legal textbooks to interpret how to decide the issue of land redistribution, coming up with tools from tradition to bring coherence to labour and land law from an Islamic perspective. It’s an elaborate scheme and in my 1993 book I describe how land reform was scuttled in Iran, but Sadr’s method was right. The tools of reflection and the rediscovery of the text, bring a wealth of legacy that makes it appealing. It is never decisive, but this is true of any law – it must be debated and renewed endlessly. Sadr is able to do this with Islamic law – you see it happening in Iraq today. You can see Sadr’s legacy as people enter the debate and develop a rule of law in the Muslim world now that the people have been freed from Saddam and grow increasingly proud and supportive of democracy. Helping the Iraqi government, legislators and judiciary to develop a rule of law is the aim of the Global Justice Project I am involved with. It is hard work, but the stakes are high. Imagine an Iraq devoid of violence, combining a humanistic view of Islam that is manifestly democratic. That would be the greatest legacy of Sadr. His once maverick political thought will have reshaped the planet."