96therefore may remain legal, even while being
haram.
Of course, this only leaves the matter of the penal
codes (hudud) themselves, which Islamic jurists in
the Ottoman empire did away with by utilizing
Imam al- Shatibi’s doctrine of “aims of Shari’ah”
(maqasid al- shari’ah), which I shall return to
below.^17
In this way the sacred and the secular can be de-
lineated, and Islamists critiqued, without the need
to exit signifi cantly from existing Islamic tradition.
The mere possibility of interpreting scripture in this
way fundamentally undermines the Islamist insis-
tence that only they speak in God’s name, and only
they are agents of His will.
It’s the same with the question of cohabiting with
“infi dels.” The Arabic word kafi r is commonly
translated to a word derived from Chris tian ity, “in-
fi del.” There’s a reason why jihadist movements
weren’t really pop u lar before the nineteenth-
century Islamist movements. For long periods of
time, Muslims were relatively progressive. Of
course they were living by very medieval standards
- http:// faith - matters. org / images / stories / fm - publications
/ the - tanzimat - fi nal - web. pdf
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