Conclusion

This way of looking at Islamic law leaves us with many questions. Why did God make the world in this way? What is the point of creation? For early Hanafis, there is no way to know the answers to these questions; one must trust that whatever the reasons, they are just.

Hanafi Islamic law, then, is utterly mundane. It concerns the practice of ev­eryday communal life, religious rituals, personal conduct, and boundaries for in­terpersonal interaction. Islamic law, in this conception, only makes sense in the context of a community and some governing structure. Outside that structure, laws no longer function, nor do they make any sense. Far from being universal rules for achieving transcendental justice, Islamic law in this way of thinking be­comes a way of ordering society and both personal and communal life according to identity and citizenship.

This does not sound like Islamic law as we tend to hear about it. In fact, most scholarship assumes that Islamic law is thoroughly imbued with metaphys­ical and salvific import, and that it strives to embody justice, either in its sub­stantive content or in its principles. An oft-repeated phrase is, ‘Islam is a total way of life’, meaning that Islamic law, whether in its dictates or its principles, applies uniformly regardless of time, place, or context to produce worldly and otherworldly justice.

There are many reasons for this, including the rise of Sunni international­ism, manuscript availability, and colonialism, but a lot has to do with the fact that when we approach Islamic law, we tend to find what we are looking for. That is, we are looking for a religious system that is spiritual, totalizing, and al­ways concerned with obedience and salvation. Islamic legal writings are likely being read with the pre-conception that, in Islam, the spiritual and the mundane are always bound together, and any discussion of the mundane is automatically a discussion of the spiritual. Thus, pre-colonial accounts of Islamic law, from Ha- nafis or others, are expected to discuss Islamic law in those terms.

However, as seen above, there is no reason to presume that Muslims always thought about Islamic law in this way, or even that they do so now.^[67] There is ample evidence that Muslims did not and do not always see the mundane as in­fused with spiritual and theological import. As I have demonstrated above, early Hanafis institutionalised a separation between Islamic law and transcendental, metaphysical justice. For such Hanafis, many of whom are still prominent today, it does not make sense to ask whether Islamic law is inherently just or unjust, because justice is itself an unattainable and incomprehensible concept that can only be understood and enacted by God. Believers are not tasked with estab­lishing justice on Earth, nor are they capable of doing so. Islamic law, then, is what Muslims agree to do, nothing more and nothing less. It is contingent on the needs and desires of the community, changes with time, and serves practical, rather than metaphysical purposes.

The early Hanafis were abundantly clear about this, and their writings left little ambiguity on the subject. Yet, modern scholarship is slow to accept their claims at face value, likely because they challenge popular, modern notions about ‘true’ Islam and Muslims, and about the uniquely spiritual nature of Is­lamic law. Taking early Hanafi legal thought seriously opens up the discussion around Islam and justice, and brings us closer to the simple notion that Islamic legal justice might mean different things to the many different Muslims around the world.