In the Introduction, I argued that, alongside the history of the Muslim world, the ‘aqd has maintained, ‘a continuity in practice, despite the changeable and plural nature of its theories and practices: a continuity whose rationales... can be coherently linked to the core postulates of Islamic religion.’

I also added that the deepest meaning of the ‘aqd ‘cannot be fully appreciated unless stud­ied in a comparative approach with the tenets of Western religion... and law.’ It is now time to provide the reader with more details about why, to understand the ‘aqd, the law and religion of Islam must be put in a compara­tive perspective with the West, within a dialectical framework that this chapter will clarify.

Dealing with the nature of representations as signifying practices when looking at Islam as other than the West, there is no doubt that the imaginative geography of the ‘aqd is worth a visit. In fact, if the Sari‘ah, the Right Path to be followed by Muslim believers, considers the market, like any other place of social interaction, a space of ethical behaviour, the ‘aqd, as an essential landmark of this space, offers a privileged angle from which to examine the interaction between law and religion in Muslim societies. In particular, it is by showing ‘the mutually constitutive relationship between Islam and Muslims:... how Islam makes Muslims as Muslims make Islam’ (Ahmed, 2016, p. 543; see later, section 1.3.2) that this book will investigate the unity-in-diversity of the ‘aqd, both in the literature offiqh and in its transformative praxis.

At the same time, the ‘aqd can also provide significant points of reflection in its comparative analysis with Western contract law, especially when located, as a topic of research, between the religious and the secular realm of human actions.

Within this background, fundamental issues related to the conceptualisa­tion of law and religion in the East and the West will emerge - something that has already led our study towards a critique of the Orientalistic representa­tion of the Muslim world that the Occident has fostered. The Introduction has specifically focused on this aspect by imagining a meeting with Gerome’s Almeh at the gate of a city that we will metaphorically visit as we proceed with our investigation. This chapter is dedicated to illustrating the methodological approach that we will follow during our visit by looking for the meaning of the ‘aqd not only as a relevant aspect of the revelation of Islam, the Muslim legal

DOI: 10.4324/9781315145761-2

tradition, and the social life of Muslim people but also in a dialectical perspec­tive with the West from the perspective of law and religion.¹

1.1.