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community that it can override established practice as well as
clear statements of the Qurʾan.^94This is precisely the function and power al- Khalidi imputes to the rab-
bis’ so- called asqāmah concerning Mendelssohn’s theory. In their con-
sensus, their ijmāʿ, the rabbis have overridden the established national
nature of pre- Mendelssohnian Judaism and have thereby delegitimized
any subsequent expression of Jewish nationality. “Mendelssohn’s the-
ory” has become, to use using Hallaq’s words, “epistemologically cer-
tain and thus insusceptible to further interpretation.” Zionism, then, is
not merely a violation of the opinion of a group of rabbis; it is a blatant
contravention of now- unquestionable law.
This is not to say that al- Khalidi merely projected an Islamic concept
onto Judaism without precedent or reason. Though it is not clear that
al- Khalidi was familiar with this phenomenon, Jews especially of the
medieval Islamic world (Maimonides, most famously) were apparently
influenced by the Islamic notion of ijmāʿ.^95 Moreover, as we shall see
in chapter 5, one of al- Khalidi’s textual sources, an Arabic work on the
Talmud written by a Jewish contemporary, appeals to the tool of and
the term ijmāʿ in its explanation of the composition of the mishnah.
What is interesting, then, is not thatal- Khalidi uses this concept but
rather howhe uses it: the stress he places on it, the term he claims it
translates, and the contention that what happened with what he calls
Mendelssohn’s theory represented just such an ijmāʿ.
If, in al- Khalidi’s mind, the consensus, formal or otherwise, of the
Jews in premodern Jewish history was that they were not merely a reli-
gion but a nation^96 and that their nation retained historic links to Pales-
tine, to which it wished to return, how could this new consensus adopt-
ing “Mendelssohn’s theory” overturn the earlier belief? To attempt to
answer this question, we must consider in greater detail al- Khalidi’s
particular religious milieu. While al- Khalidi was trained, as we have
seen, in traditional Sunni Islamic studies, he and his family were in-
timately involved with a new religious modernist, reformist tendency
within late nineteenth- century and early twentieth- century Islam that
(^94) “consensus,” OeMIW. On ijmāʿ, see also Hallaq, AHistoryofIslamicLegalTheories,
75– 81; coulson, AHistoryofIslamicLaw, 77– 80.
(^95) See Libson, JewishandIslamicLaw, 9, 24, 198n.65. Judith Romney Wegner con-
tends that ijmāʿ has a Jewish precedent as it is “conceptually equivalent to that expressed
in the Talmud by the word ha-kol.” Wegner, “Islamic and Talmudic Jurisprudence,”
42– 43.
(^96) To understand al- Khalidi’s theory, we must overlook the anachronism he employs
in imagining the antiquity of this dichotomy.