“Two features would by now be obvious: (1) far from being a clear and definite code, the shariah is ambiguous; (2) it is ambiguous on the entire spectrum of issues. Two operational consequences follow: (1) this ambiguity is one of the bases for the unrivalled power of the ulema; (2) the ulema therefore sabotage every effort to codify the shariah as zealously as they fight back every effort to replace it by a modern code common to all.”

—  Arun Shourie

The World of Fatwas (Or The Shariah In Action)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Two features would by now be obvious: (1) far from being a clear and definite code, the shariah is ambiguous; (2) it is…" by Arun Shourie?
Arun Shourie photo
Arun Shourie51
Indian journalist and politician 1941

Related quotes

Arun Shourie photo

“And so on indefinitely. The effect of all this will be obvious: when you take a problem to them, the ulema can facilitate your way or thwart it by invoking one authority rather than the other. Simultaneously they, joined this time by the apologist, will insist that we, in particular the non-Muslims, must never cease to believe that the shariah is a clear and definite code, that it is a divinely ordained, and therefore an eternal and unchanging code!”

Arun Shourie (1941) Indian journalist and politician

The World of Fatwas (Or The Shariah In Action)

Ted Chiang photo

“The universe was a language with a perfectly ambiguous grammar. Every physical event was an utterance that could be parsed in two entirely different ways, one causal and the other teleological.”

Ted Chiang book Stories of Your Life and Others

Story of Your Life; first appeared in Starlight 2, 1998.
Stories of Your Life and Others (2002)

Gloria Estefan photo

“No fighting, Glorias! Gloria Estefan [the real one] to two female impersonators [Gloria #1 and Gloria #2]”

Gloria Estefan (1957) Cuban-American singer-songwriter, actress and divorciada

The Evolution Tour: Live in Miami
2007, 2008

Adam Gopnik photo

“With all the effort in the world, the results of cramming kids are likely to be more ambiguous than we can predict, not because the child rearing was done wrong but because all such results tend to be ambiguous.”

Adam Gopnik (1956) American journalist

How to Raise a Prodigy, The New Yorker (2018)

Simone de Beauvoir photo

“The failure described in Being and Nothingness is definitive, but it is also ambiguous.”

Simone de Beauvoir book The Ethics of Ambiguity

Part I : Ambiguity and Freedom
The Ethics of Ambiguity (1947)
Context: The failure described in Being and Nothingness is definitive, but it is also ambiguous. Man, Sartre tells us, is “a being who makes himself a lack of being in order that there might be being.” That means, first of all, that his passion is not inflicted upon him from without. He chooses it. It is his very being and, as such, does not imply the idea of unhappiness. If this choice is considered as useless, it is because there exists no absolute value before the passion of man, outside of it, in relation to which one might distinguish the useless from the useful. The word “useful” has not yet received a meaning on the level of description where Being and Nothingness is situated. It can be defined only in the human world established by man’s projects and the ends he sets up. In the original helplessness from which man surges up, nothing is useful, nothing is useless. It must therefore be understood that the passion to which man has acquiesced finds no external justification. No outside appeal, no objective necessity permits of its being called useful. It has no reason to will itself. But this does not mean that it can not justify itself, that it can not give itself reasons for being that it does not have. And indeed Sartre tells us that man makes himself this lack of being in order that there might be being. The term in order that clearly indicates an intentionality. It is not in vain that man nullifies being. Thanks to him, being is disclosed and he desires this disclosure. There is an original type of attachment to being which is not the relationship “wanting to be” but rather “wanting to disclose being.” Now, here there is not failure, but rather success.

David Eugene Smith photo

“In the work of Vieta the analytic methods replaced the geometric, and his solutions of the quadratic equation were therefore a distinct advance upon those of his predecessors. For example, to solve the equation x^2 + ax + b = 0 he placed u + z for x. He then hadu^2 + (2z + a)u +(z^2 + az + b) = 0.He now let 2z + a = 0, whence z = -\frac{1}{2}a,and this gaveu^2 - \frac{1}{4}(a^2 - 4b) = 0.
u = \pm \frac{1}{2} \sqrt{a^2 - 4b}.andx = u + z = -\frac{1}{2}a \pm \sqrt{a^2 - 4b}.</center”

David Eugene Smith (1860–1944) American mathematician

Source: History of Mathematics (1925) Vol.2, p.449

“We follow two rules in the matter of optimization:
Rule 1: Don't do it.
Rule 2 (for experts only). Don't do it yet - that is, not until you have a perfectly clear and unoptimized solution.”

Michael A. Jackson (1936) British computer scientist

Principles of program design, 1975

“There are here two assumptions about 'evaluations ', which I will call assumption (1) and assumption (2). Assumption (1) is that some individual may, without logical error, base his beliefs about matters of value entirely on premises which no one else would recognise as giving any evidence at all. Assumption (2) is that, given the kind of statement which other people regard as evidence for an evaluative conclusion, he may refuse to draw the conclusion because this does not count as evidence for him.”

Philippa Foot (1920–2010) British philosopher

"Moral Beliefs"

Mark Manson photo

“Good values are 1) reality-based, 2) socially constructive, and 3) immediate and controllable.
Bad values are 1) superstitious, 2) socially destructive, and 3) not immediate and controllable.”

Mark Manson (1984) American writer and blogger

Source: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck (2016), Chapter 4, “The Value of Suffering” (p. 86)

Augustus De Morgan photo

“Take a unit, halve it, halve the result, and so on continually. This gives—1 1⁄2 1⁄4 1⁄8 1⁄16 1⁄32 1⁄64 1⁄128 &c.;Add these together, beginning from the first, namely, add the first two, the first three, the first four, &c;… We see then a continual approach to 2, which is not reached, nor ever will be, for the deficit from 2 is always equal to the last term added.
…We say that—1, 1 + 1⁄2, 1 + 1⁄2 + 1⁄4, 1 + 1⁄2 + 1⁄4 + 1⁄8, &c.; &c.;is a series of quantities which continually approximate to the limit 2. Now the truth is, these several quantities are fixed, and do not approximate to 2. …it is we ourselves who approximate to 2, by passing from one to another. Similarly when we say, "let x be a quantity which continually approximates to the limit 2," we mean, let us assign different values to x, each nearer to 2 than the preceding, and following such a law that we shall, by continuing our steps sufficiently far, actually find a value for x which shall be as near to 2 as we please.”

Augustus De Morgan (1806–1871) British mathematician, philosopher and university teacher (1806-1871)

The Differential and Integral Calculus (1836)

Related topics