228 Islam and Modernity
schools of law as traditionally understood has been considerably weakened, a
collective ijtihad, especially when undertaken under the auspices of an institu-
tionalised platform, offers possibilities to fi ll in some of the space vacated by the
traditional schools of law. Finally, institutionalising the authority of the ulama,
and of those inclined to work closely with them, offers prospects for political
infl uence, of having claims to represent Islam and the Muslim community
at large taken seriously, even of being able to resist the state’s intervention in
matters of religion. It is this role that best defi nes the AIMPLB in contemporary
India – and it underlies both its appeal in some Indian quarters and its notoriety
in others.
Yet this sort of institutionalisation does not assuage all the ulama’s anxieties.
Even as it seems to offer better prospects of collectively resisting governmental
encroachment, a centralised locus of authority may, paradoxically, be not less
but more vulnerable to government regulation. In Egypt, governmental efforts
to regulate the religious sphere have had unpredictable results, but the very
fact that it is al-Azhar on which they have focused has to do with the central
position of this institution in the country’s religious life. Initiatives towards
enhancing this centrality have been a thinly disguised prelude to regulating it
more effectively and, through it, the larger religious sphere. In France, gov-
ernmental efforts to create an institutional structure for the Muslim citizens
of the state, so that the government might have a ‘privileged interlocutor’ on
all matters Islamic, poses similar diffi culties. The Conseil Français du Culte
Musulman (CFCM) was established in 2003 to this end, with its members
elected through French mosques, though usually not recognisable as ulama.
But, as John Bowen (2007: 55) has remarked, this bold French initiative is
affl icted by ‘a dilemma faced by most efforts to construct a legitimate repre-
sentation from the top down: those willing to be “co-opted” are also those with
the least legitimacy’.
Two points are worth considering in conclusion. First, even where new
structures of religious authority have emerged, often bringing new facets of
contestation to the public sphere, they have seldom driven other, older claim-
ants to authority from the scene (cf. Kaptein 2004: 125). If fatwas issued from
the madrasa at Deoband carry considerable weight, individual Deobandi
scholars and madrasas elsewhere have continued to issue and publish their
own fatwas – and these have not necessarily taken the same, ‘Deobandi’, posi-
tion on all matters. Nor have leadership roles in the Fiqh Academy precluded
individual scholars from acting as jurisconsults in their individual capacity (for
one example, see Rahmani 2005; for a similar point with reference to the early
history of the Egyptian Dar al-Ifta, cf. Skovgaard-Petersen 1997: 121). Some of
al-Qaradawi’s own views have, for their part, been glaringly at odds with those
of others on the European Council of Fatwa and Research.^8
Secondly, as the example of the Dar al-Ifta in both Egypt and India suggest, it