Bold Transmutations

Rereading Hasan Hanafi's Early Writings on Fiqh

Authors

  • Carool Kersten King's College,London

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1558/cis.v3i1.22

Keywords:

Hasan Hanafi, leftist Islam, heritage and renewal project

Abstract

Following Ebrahim Moosa's suggestion regarding fresh approaches to the study of religion by relying on other scholarly specializations such as Translation Studies, this article attempts to apply the achievements made in that relatively new field of academic inquiry to the Egyptian philosopher Hasan Hanafi's contributions to the radical rereading of usul al-fiqh. Refracting Hanafi's first publication, Les méthodes d‘exégèse, through notions and concepts developed in Translation Studies will demonstrate the boldness of Hanafi's innovations. Such an alternative assessment of this early work will also evince that the theoretical foundations for his better-known writings from the 1980s, on “Leftist Islam” and the ambitious “heritage and renewal” project, can already be discerned in this text from the 1960s.

Author Biography

  • Carool Kersten, King's College,London
    Carool Kersten is a lecturer in Islamic Studies at King's College London. He previously taught history and religion at the Graduate and International Studies Center of Payap University in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Kersten is a PhD candidate in the Study of Religions at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, and has an MA (hons.) in Arabic Language and Culture with a specialization in Islamic Studies (Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands). He is a member of the Chartered Institute of Linguistics (MCIL) and the International Association for Translation and Intercultural Studies (IATIS).

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Published

2008-10-19

Issue

Section

Articles

How to Cite

Kersten, C. (2008). Bold Transmutations: Rereading Hasan Hanafi’s Early Writings on Fiqh. Comparative Islamic Studies, 3(1), 22-38. https://doi.org/10.1558/cis.v3i1.22