LAST BLOG.

I have two different comments that I’d like to talk about in my final blog post. My first comment deals with what we spoke about yesterday regarding what it meant for the Arab individual to “emerge as subjects of their own history”(Ramadan 97). The entire phrase means that the Muslim majority of society needs to be able to develop ideas of government and politics that are specific to them as opposed to reacting for or what is against them. I really enjoyed the conversation the entire class had about what it truly means. It boiled down to a few major points. If they are focusing on their own history, then it is a source for more conflict in the Middle East. It shows how deeply rooted this situation is in what it means to be a nation and the role of an individual within a nation. It also suggests that states and individuals act rationally in accord with their own interests and that you don’t just have to be anti-western.

My second comment is about the implementation of the shari’a. It is said, “Far from being reduced to a disputed article in a constitution, reference to the shari'a must be placed in a much broader context”(Ramadan 114). This shows that the shari’a is not just something you stick into a constitution. It is a diverse tradition and many of its principles deal with interpretation and reasoning and what sources are actually privileged. There is not just one form of shari’a which is something I found to be very interesting. The shari’a could mean a number of things. Ramadan is able to combat fundamentalists readings of his tradition by going back and actually saying that it is much deeper than what literalist Islamists and the West may think.

And that is all.