Kick-off event: The Use and Usefulness of Concepts: Video Interviews

Canonization and Codification are two terms that both allude to processes of selection and validation.

As analytical concepts, they draw our attention to human agency and historical context and they are useful in juxtaposition with each other, or with other, related concepts. But in Islamic legal studies they are also used for rather different phenomena.

Codification has to a large extent been used to describe the modernization of Islamic law, including the increasing dominance of the state and a move away from open ended, pre-modern fiqh. It is thus by many seen as lacking a pre-modern counterpart or version. 

Canonization has more recently started being used as a lens to understand how certain texts, scholars and institutions become ascribed with authority over time. This body of theory surrounding "canonization" is largely associated with the study of Christianity but is now increasingly used also in studies on Islam as way to critically talk about authority, not only analytically, but also normatively.

See also our related roundtable webinar, on the same topic, 27th of May, here.

Interviews

We have interviewed leading scholars in the field of Islamic legal studies on their views and experiences with the concepts of "canonization" and "codification".

Michael Cook (Class of 1943 University Professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University) interviewed by Christian Mauder, assoc. professor at UiB.

Nevin Reda (Assoc. Professor at University of Toronto) and Yasmin Amin (PhD at Exeter University) interviewed by Nijmi Edres (PhD), researcher at Georg-Eckert-Institut - Leibniz-Institut für internationale Schulbuchforschung.

Jonathan Brown (Professor, Alwaleed bin Talal Chair of Islamic Civilization at Georgetown University) interviewed by Christian Mauder, assoc. professor at UiB.

Marion Katz (Professor at New York University) interviewed by Anne K. Bang, professor at UiB.