Roger Scruton 2002, in i The West and the Rest, on upheaval in Islamic countries, primarily against secular political institutions. (The “individual case is”, I think is that there’s no public sphere between a Muslim person and God.)
“…in almost all respects relevant to the government of a large society, the shari’a […] proceeds by the application of immensely complex sources to the individual case and, while rich in jurisprudential commentary, has produced no body of general laws.
It has therefore been necessary at every epoch for the ruler […] to lay down laws of his own that will guarantee his power, facilitate administration, and permit the collection of taxes. But these laws have no independent legitimacy in the eyes of those compelled to obey them. […] In any upheaval they are rejected entirely as the arbitrary edicts of a usurper. Hence, there is no scope in a traditional Islamic society for the kinds of purely political development, through the patient building of institutions and secular laws, that we know in the West. Change, when it comes, takes the form of a crisis, as power is challenged from below in the name of the one true Power above.”
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Roger Scruton 2002, in i The West and the Rest, on upheaval in Islamic countries, primarily against secular political institutions. (The “individual case is”, I think is that there’s no public sphere between a Muslim person and God.)
“…in almost all respects relevant to the government of a large society, the shari’a […] proceeds by the application of immensely complex sources to the individual case and, while rich in jurisprudential commentary, has produced no body of general laws.
It has therefore been necessary at every epoch for the ruler […] to lay down laws of his own that will guarantee his power, facilitate administration, and permit the collection of taxes. But these laws have no independent legitimacy in the eyes of those compelled to obey them. […] In any upheaval they are rejected entirely as the arbitrary edicts of a usurper. Hence, there is no scope in a traditional Islamic society for the kinds of purely political development, through the patient building of institutions and secular laws, that we know in the West. Change, when it comes, takes the form of a crisis, as power is challenged from below in the name of the one true Power above.”