Baber Johansen is perhaps the most original scholar currently working in the field of classical
Islamic—predominantly Hanafi—law. It is useful therefore to have fifteen of his
articles, not all of which were easily accessible, collected in a single volume, together with a new
Introduction. The themes that emerge in the Introduction serve to highlight some of the leitmotifs
that occur in the articles that follow. In it, he sketches the development of fiqh as a
discrete branch of Islamic learning and outlines some of the characteristic Western approaches to
its study. The theme of fiqh as a development independent of theology and formal
ethical literature is one that occurs in several of the articles that follow. In “Die
sündige gesunde Amme,” Johansen discusses in detail how the systematic
reasoning of the jurists and the principle of judging according to only external appearances often
led to a sharp distinction between religious ethics and legal rulings. This distinction is also the
subject of “Le jugement comme preuve: preuve juridique et verité religieuse
dans le droit islamique hanéfite.” Here, he shows how in Hanafi law only
what is externally apparent is acceptable as evidence, and how legal proof depends on a formal
procedure that recognizes a fixed hierarchy in the different forms of testimony. A consequence of
this procedural formalism was that judgments could be unjust but nevertheless valid in law. The
injustices that this distinction between legal and ethical norms could on occasion produce was
something that the fuqaha¯ acknowledged. However, although a judgment could
not be reversed, the aggrieved party could bring a new case with new evidence if a court's
decision appeared unjust.
Baber Johansen, Contingency in a Sacred Law. Legal and Ethical Norms in the Muslim Fiqh, Leiden-Boston-Köln, Brill (coll. « Studies in Islamic Law and Society », n° 7), 1999.