Abstract
M.A.
Distinguished Islamic scholar Tariq Ramadan found the application of ḥudūd punishments to affect women and the poor disproportionately. He therefore issued a call for a moratorium on these punishments in Muslim majority countries despite their derivation from definitive texts, appealing to maqāṣid al-sharīʿa for internal legitimacy. This dissertation applies a decolonial critique to Ramadan’s maqāṣid-based reform project. This is achieved first, by putting Ramadan in conversation with Ali Gomaa, Grand Mufti emeritus of Egypt and al-ʿIzz ibn ʿAbd al-Salām, one of the foundational contributors to the maqāṣid theory, both of whom engage the ḥudūd via maqāṣid coming to contrasting conclusions. Second, the carceral system which would serve as the interim punishment during a moratorium is subjected to a Foucauldian critique of its underlying theory as well as to the critiques of Angela Davis, Michelle Alexander and Peter Moskos regarding the prison industrial system, institutionalized racism and the violence of socio-psychological punishment respectively. Because they are well-nigh impossible to implement in addition to being historically statistically negligible, Ramadan’s focus on the ḥudūd in lieu of taʿzīr and siyāsa is, from a decolonial analysis, problematized and indicative of the coloniality of power at large. His conclusion on ḥudūd is shown to stem from his substantive rather than procedural usage of the maqāṣid methodology. Double Consciousness Theory is employed to illustrate how hegemonic Western epistemology and U.S. geo-strategic interests-cum-universal values implicitly divert Ramadan’s gaze towards the ḥudūd. The moral nature of the ḥudūd, in direct contrast to the political nature of siyasa, particularly the prohibition of illicit sex and drinking, are directly at odds with Western values. Decolonially examined, the carceral system as an alternative, results in the regulation not the elimination of violence. Using Foucault, the negative correlation between regulation and corporal punishment is discussed further. This research finds that while context is essential to the project of Ramadan and although he makes a pedagogic point of locating himself within the Islamic epistemic tradition, his reform project in this case, both fails vis-à-vis context and is ultimately undertaken with a colonial lens.