The Islamic Secular

Sherman A. Jackson

Oxford University Press, New York, 2024, iv+544 pp.

ISBN 9780197661789

Febriansyah Ramadhan

 

Sherman A. Jackson has long established himself as one of the most influential scholars of Islamic law in the Western academic sphere. His seminal works, such as Islam and the Problem of Black Suffering (2009) and On Forgiveness (2013), underscore the significance of moral and contextual perspectives in interpreting religious texts. The Islamic Secular (Oxford University Press, 2024) may be regarded as the culmination of a decades-long intellectual project, demonstrating the continuity and coherence of Jackson’s scholarly trajectory. Jackson’s first monumental work, an evolution of his thought, was Islamic Law and the State, published in 1996. In this work, Jackson explored the Ayyūbid-Mamlūk thoughts on the conflict between power, in this case the state, and classical Islamic legal thought in Egypt.1 This book was the beginning of Jackson’s interest in the intersection of Islamic law, sharīʿah and the political power of the state, which later influenced many of his thoughts in The Islamic Secular.