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In a dazzling new book, Minding the Place, Space and Religious Hierarchy in Imlpaiyums Akkam Al-Dimma. Antonio Bosenkhet addresses these questions through a detailed and theoretically charged reading of the famous and crucially important legal text and compendium, Akkam Al-Dimma by Imlpaiyam Al-Jozia. Bosenkhet forcefully argues that one must approach this text not just as an legal compendium, but as a critical repository of three modern Muslim social imaginaries on the question of inter-religious difference. In our conversation, we discuss a range of issues including literary precedents for Akkam Al-Dimma, spatial mappings and religious hierarchies, relational space and everyday Muslim non-Muslim encounters and the eschatological status of non-Muslim children.
This is loosely written and analytically exciting book with smart interest among specialists and non-specialists alike. Here now is my conversation with Professor Antonia Bosenkhet. Hello Antonia, welcome to the new books network. Thank you so much for coming on the new books network.
For discussing this really terrific new book, Minding the Place is an incredible book which conducts a very theoretically interesting and dazzling analysis of a very key text and figure from early modern or medieval Islam. So we look forward to the conversation and we have a tradition of the new books network that our first question is biographical. So Antonia, if you could share with us a bit how you became a scholar of Islam was your story of your journey and then how did you get to write this particular book? Yeah, okay.
Well first of all, thanks for having me on the show. It's really nice to be here. And about my course in Nakhayen, it was a bit of a winding one. I became interested in Islamic studies while I was doing my first degree in theology and religion in Cambridge.
And the lecturer that we had for Islam in winter was a really inspiring teacher. So I ended up focusing on Islam for the rest of my course and then after my studies going out to Egypt to learn Arabic. And I funded my Arabic studies in Egypt through a job with the Sores Islamophistic Foundation which is the umbrella organization that runs projects like the Islamic Manish Book Association and the Sunnah Project. And so I worked on projects relating to Islamic heritage and the compilation of a new hadith and psychopedic.
So it was a good learning experience about Islamic heritage and Islamic history. I also ended up teaching the Muslim of the Arab Egypt, Shihaili Gumbat in English because when he became Muslim, he had to increase his English language skills. So I was meeting for an hour or two every day and we would chat or do grammar exercises. And that was also a good opportunity to learn about Islam and especially political Islam in Egypt.
And then I eventually left Egypt and I went to New England in Germany to do what's called the biggest art in Islamic cities. It's strategically speaking, that was not wise because I didn't know any German. And the Magister Art in degree is actually quite a lot of work compared to a Masters or an MA course. So I graduated much later than I had anticipated and I was really fed up with academia by that time.
I got a geography and a corruption organization called Sorenthe International working in the Middle Eastern North African Department. And this was the year when the Arab Spring took off. It was a really exciting time to be working in the region. But I still didn't manage to stay away from academia for long.
After two years I was back, I started a PhD at the Free University of Berlin looking at inter-religious relations in contemporary Séléfie thought. So that PhD on 21st century Séléfie thought turned into a study as a 14th century legal text called Akema Lebimah by the Hanbury-Giorisan theologian in the Kaimahyema-Josia. I had started reading the Kaimahyema-Josia or even Akhaem while I was an Egypt. I had already looked at his into religious thought in his theological work, Hideo Vahyara Fier-Gioris-Hogon-Nafada, which means guys to the confused and answering the views of the Christians.
But this work Hideo Vahyara is about the theological aspects of religious difference. Akhaema-Lebimah is more about social management of Muslim Muslims. So I started reading this after I had gone to Saudi Arabia on a preliminary research trip. And I had met with some scholars and some clerics.
And when we got talking about inter-religious relations they often recommended this book to me. So I came home and I started reading it. And it was such a fascinating work for so many different reasons. But at the same time there wasn't any engagement with it in second literature, apart from one very good article by David Fiedenheit about the food regulations in the book.
It was being quoted a lot and it was being referred to a lot, but there wasn't much understanding of what it actually was. So I thought the book should be studied in depth and seeing as no one else was doing it, I did that myself. I changed my PhD to focus on this text. And that ended up being the book that's now being published with this title.
Terrific. Thank you so much. So, Antimmeh, I thought as to begin perhaps what might be useful for the listeners is before we get to him in the Hayyim and this particular text, I'll ask you that as my next question. But I think one of the most interesting and exciting things about this book is the kind of theoretical framing around the place and space that you bring to this pre-modern text.
And the title of the book is Minding Their Place. So perhaps you could talk a bit about this theoretical framing of your book. What does minding the place refer to? How do you refer to the categories of place and space in how you read this pre-modern legal compendium?
I was wondering if you could just explain a bit to our listeners the category of place and how it works in your book. Yeah, that's a good question because obviously the phrase minding that place is not a very predictable title for a book about a 14th century legal compendium. Maybe I should start by saying that place here refers to the social status or the social role of the non-lesslands or the maze. In society in every not Hayyim's thought.
And I chose this phrase minding their place because it summed up what I saw as the main argument or message of a book. I think we hear this phrase less often now, but when I was little being told to mind your place was a way of being put back into the social role that your identity gave you. It was a phrase that implied a whole social hierarchy and where you fitted in in this hierarchy and which you didn't have the right to change. And I thought this fitted well to even a Hayyim's argument in Achaemen of the Mac, which is that the means or Christians and Jews living in the Muslim rule.
Do you have a role? Do you have a place in Muslim society? And do you have a place in the social hierarchy of that society? His concern is that they are currently challenging as well and trying to move out of a place that's being assigned to them and that this has terrible consequences, not only for society, but also for the divine structure that God has given to his creation.
So his argument that they should mind their place or they should stick to the role that's been assigned to them runs right away through a carement of the map. So that's one way in which this phrase minding their place picks up on the arguments in the case. But if we interpret this phrase differently, it also relates to another argument that if not Hayyim's making, which is that the Muslim scholars or the rulers or the people in the streets should pay more attention to the place of the Muslim. Rather than not minding or being indifferent to the ways that Muslims are using or changing their social status, if not Hayyim is calling our Hayyim's making readers to take notice or to mind the place of the non-reself.
So this is the relevant of this phrase, the reference to the place in the title. With adding space, that's a much wider to be able to put concept or construct. And I actually became aware of or became interested in the relevant of space to if not Hayyim's work after my political work with trans-rarity international. Because while I was working with anti-corruption activists in the Middle East, I was interested in how space paid really important role in awareness raising activities or confronting corruption.
It wasn't just about the space that activists could get for their demonstrations or for their programs. It was also about how they used this space in terms of body language and positioning where they were putting objects that they were using. Even where they distributed their information was important for the influence that their message had on their audience. So the spatial dimension of civil activism, of civil protest, of civil unrest are things that you have to think about when you can movement.
And often the activists didn't think about these questions because they were just so obvious to everyone involved, even to me, in my office in Berlin. And this was also interesting to me because they showed how universal the language of space is or how easy it is to understand, feelings of people from different cultural or geographical backgrounds. And so I was reminded of this experience when I read Achaam Al-Ridimla because so many of the rulings in the book and so much of the not-hamed discussion of these shows of the awareness of the power that space has become a message. And sometimes it seems very basic, like the ruling among the same should make way for Muslim when they meet in the path.
And sometimes it becomes more complicated like the instructions for a Muslim's body language when the enters and one Muslims households. Or the discussion about how to bury a non-Muslim woman who dies while she's pregnant with a Muslim baby, which space which she belonged to and how it is a positioning of the body to reflect the hierarchy between Islam and the other monophies of religions. So this was something that I wanted to look at more closely. And there is a lot of really interesting, pre-ological writing on space and intellectual reality and how this relates to power, which is obviously also a key question.
So I spent about a year reading through the trial of prayer and the subtle and commutting and student-ed and I really recommend these books if people are interested in these questions. But I found it difficult to relate them directly to my topic of illegal compendium between a man with Damascus. I don't think that the language of space is historically or geographic or constrained. But I think that the way that we approach this discussion is that in quite context specific.
And that's a good thing. And it makes the music more meaningful. But it also makes frustrating this approach more difficult. For example, Andrew Lefebvre, who is really non-profit writing on space of power, is very much focused or was very much focused on the relevance of this question through this criticism of 20th century capitalism or capitalism in 20th century France.
And I can't quite see how you can transfer that theory along or take it outside of the context of these political views and transfer it to understand the opinion thought. So in the end, I think we follow one specific theory argument. I work with the first principles and concepts of space as something that is created through social and economic processes. But for the way that I use this concept, I've allowed Martina Nerves research into the construction and transformation of space and the role of human activity in this human activity in voice, body language, clothing.
And so on. And the other thing that I like about Martina Nerves writing is that she shows how material structures together with human activity construct a specific form of space. So for example, the structures and the way people behave in this space create what we understand as a classroom or a theatre. And she also shows how these places then affect our behavior and even influence the form of relation that we have to each other.
I think the other thing that's important for my work is that as the fourth-person notes, we don't have to think of space as a physical container. Of course, many of the spaces that if not came in the first room in the hand of the month are physically bounded spaces like the mosque or the Arabian Peninsula. But other spaces are not a paracal like the space or business transaction. This space is also constructed through the body language of participants and their awareness of what kind of space they're in.
But it's not something that you can define and you can't put borders around it in the same way that you could in a house or a church. Thank you, Antonio. So next what I want to ask, Antonio, I can hear you perfectly fine, but just to be on the safe side, maybe a little louder might be useful. Just to be on the safe side in terms of making sure that your sound comes amply through.
The next question I want to ask, Antonio, is sort of a broad question for listeners who may be unfamiliar with this text, Al-Dimba and with Milka Yim Al-Dozia. Just to introduce the author, the text, what it is about, what kind of a text it is, what are some key themes that it has and a little bit about the author as well. And just to sort of familiarize our listeners with the kind of material you're working with. Yeah, okay.
Well, Ithnal Kayan was a jurist and a theologian who spent most of his life in Damascus, who was born in 1292. He died in 1350 and he didn't leave the city very much apart from once or twice, I think, before in the pilgrimage and he also visited Egypt. He was a very spiritual person. He works of advice or spiritual self-help guides from Muslims that are still read today.
He was a handbelly, which is especially important for understanding his legal works. He was also an early cellophage, which in this context means that he preferred to go back to what he saw as the teaching of the Sela for the first generation of Muslims, rather than rely on the tradition that had accumulated in the centuries since then. He wasn't actually that well known or off-ourstages. He didn't write very much.
I don't think he wrote anything at all until he came out of prison in 1328 after his teacher, Antemia, had died. In fact, his main claim to fame in the 14th century and today as well, in many cases, is that he was one of the closest students of Antemia. He was a more controversial figure and even today attracted more attention to what his works and his teaching. So, with Enoch Aion was one of his loyalist students.
There is so much influence of Enoch Aion in all of his books, and you can see that in Acha-Mall rhythm as well. And Enoch Aion was very close to Enoch Aion and supported most of the things that he said. He even went to prison with him and didn't come out until Enoch Aion died in 1328. And then Enoch Aion started writing.
And he wrote ten books in all different genres into his own death in 1350. He wrote books on etymology, on etydices, on spiritual guidance. He also wrote legal books. And Acha-Mall rhythm is probably best categorized as a legal book.
One of my arguments is that it's not only a legal book, but certainly, I mean even the title Acha-M which means ruins and elevate shows that it was seen as a collection of ruins or a collection of laws. So, the book itself, back then another myth, is what claims to be or is supposed to be through the title. A collection of rulings about non-muslims, who are living permanently under Muslim rule. As most of the citizens will probably know, the Vinley's were the Jews and the Christians who lived as permanent subjects of Muslim rule, not like the merchants that were passing through the godless land or the non-muslims that came for the purposes of war, for example.
The Vinley's had a contract with protection, which gave them certain religious freedoms and privileges in return for obligations and also the payment of a tax for the Jews. So Acha-Mall rhythm contains discussions about this tax and it contains discussions about other rules specific to these glass of subjects in the Muslim word. Now, you also talk about, I'm referring you to the third chapter, some of the what you call literary precedents for this text, a poet of draws on a variety of different kinds of precedents that include sort of a judicial text, a fifth text, but also some other kinds of text like the the pack of armor, etc. So, maybe, briefly if you could describe or listen to this a bit, what kinds of literary precedents was in a time drawing on it?
How does he rework them or how does he appropriate them or how does he read them or how does he make it part of his own project? I know it's a big question, but maybe you could write some brief examples of what kinds of precedents is he drawn in writing this book. Yeah, okay. Yeah, that's an interesting question because in some ways Acha-Mall rhythm isn't an unusual work because it was one of the very few works that focused on non-muslims.
As a legal category. So, most legal compumbia address the acts that have a category or a chapter or a section on marriage that have a section on commercial transfer or business partnerships that have a section on burial, but they won't have a section on the identity of the people who are doing those acts. It's all act based and not agent based. So, again, another one that is unusual for that reason.
But he does have a lot of different sources that he draws on and he works these into his book in a really scalable, interesting way. One of the most important texts for his book is the fact of a work. This was one of the earliest collections of regulations for non-muslims. Apparently it was completed between a menomical and a Christian of Syria when they were conquered by the Muslim armies.
It might also have been completed later, but it was certainly an awful reflection of regulations for non-muslims by the time that if not, I am just writing. And he puts this at the end of his book and it's kind of the final note on how non-muslims should be incorporated into a Muslim society and the way that their theological or religious subordination to his lab should be reflected in spatial terms. Another important pre-dissessifying is of course the legal texts. These are the ones that he draws on the most throughout the book.
And a key text from him here is the companion of Ababa Falais, who was one of the major students of the Hanban. Ababa Falais was wrote down in many of Hanban's teachings and he actually dedicated the whole volume to non-muslims called Aicama de Melais. And lots of these readings are then copied into Aicama de Melais. But usually not in the same order or in the same manner of presentation that we find in Ababais books.
So even Akayim has edited it quite heavily. And that's really interesting to compare the two and to see the changes or the differences not only between Akayim's thought and her lairs, but also in the Hanban tradition itself as it moved on in the years since Akayim was writing. Another important text is what I certainly mentioned in the 10 years writing is of course these footage throughout the book. We find big chunks of serato and recipe, which is these books on wonderful festivals and the dangers of innovating members in.
There's a software about church and building, which is in Akayim also includes, which hasn't been found in any of them in 10 years' works. He also quotes from Elsada Namassal about the person of the perfect and the punishment that should be given to him because he's a perfect. And there are other signs of his influence, but we can't assign them directly to the text. The conversation between the two.
And then of course other authors, other texts, other genres appear throughout Akayim other than that. But I'd say that those are the main influences on the book as a whole. The topic is about the question of space in Akayim and you give multiple kinds of examples of how Emil Khayim tries to demarcate distinct spaces, Muslim spaces, Vimy spaces, etc. I thought I'd just say a couple of examples.
You agree with those examples as illustrations. What was this whole fascinating discussion you have about mosques and churches? And you make this very interesting argument that you might think that he disregards mosques as Muslim spaces and churches as Vimy spaces, but it's more complicated than that. So, I'd like you to perhaps tell us a bit about how he thinks about the relationship between the Muslims and these spaces of mosques and churches.
And secondly, the whole question of death burial in the afterlife, because you make this point that as you're just saying, the space is not only the physical space, but it can have a more abstract meaning also in Akayim. So I think those examples might be useful for listeners to get a sense of how you analyze the place of space and how we distinguish between Muslim and Vimy spaces in a section. Maybe those examples you could perhaps talk a bit about that part of the argument. Yeah, especially actually, his discussion about mosques is interesting because he moves away from what was pretty much an established tradition, which saw, or at least which allowed Christians to enter mosques when it was necessary.
Of course, the Prophet's house and the mosque in the early times of Islam had been a functioned of as a meeting place. And so there wasn't really a tradition of prohibiting Christian entry to the mosques, but if they have an Akayim, the mosque is not really somewhere where the Muslims should enter. And he makes this argument with reference to, I think he mentions it to impurity, which is odd because he doesn't pay that much attention to purity throughout the rest of the text. But when he's justifying the fact that non-Muslim should not enter the mosque, he says they are impure and therefore the mosque, as opposed to purity, should not be entered by them.
And so this is a point on which he diverges from as far as I know where, what was relatively widespread view that mosques were on occasion open to non-Muslims. And it also contrasts with his view of churches, which are in some ways Christian faces and in some ways also not. He's got a much more complicated view of churches actually. On the one hand, he does that not if these are Christian faces of worship and they're specific to Christians.
And he actually mentions, for example, the battle foundance. If a child is found in a church, then he is the leader of a Christian because he must have Christian parents to be faced in a church. So here he clearly acknowledges that the church is a Christian place and he even gives this place a form of agency in that eternity, the identity of the child found it. And this is problematic for him because as a Christian space, as a Christian place, the church is in between the powerful and chosen building on the Muslim landscape.
And I'm sure if we look at some of the church's books down here today, we can imagine how impressive it must have been in some of the smaller towns or on the landscapes of shared spaces between Muslim Christians. And because it may not pay so much attention to the power that space has to convince or the message that space can convey, it's a problem for him to have a church, you know, to have a symbol of another religion that is so imposed. So we deal with this in a number of different ways. He discusses that some length of why the church is going to be removed.
He does talk with the idea of removing churches, but he also has a way that many of you have a right to be there. He doesn't agree with those rules that say that they should all be removed. But he also expresses a form of, for the argues for a form of Muslim ownership over churches. He transmits rulings arguing that Muslims are free to stay in these churches and have a rich, which wasn't itself enough to afford a country that's a ruling that was also quite a random regulation.
That Christian will oblige to let Muslims stay in the church if they need hospitality and they will oblige to give them some food if they're free to fight it too. But he goes further than this by giving them a simple example of the way the pray in these churches at any point, regardless of the images that are on the walls. Looking at the question of death, death and funeral rituals and also the afterlife play quite a big role in a kind of a dilemma. And it is quite interesting to see how Ibn Akayyam works with these ideas.
I referred earlier to the question of the burial of non-Muslim women who's carrying Muslim child when she dies and the question of where she should be buried. And what's interesting again in this discussion when Ibn Akayyam is comparing the rulers and analyzing them is he's considered that a non-Muslim body is actually a place of punishment. And to put this place of punishment, this body of punishment into a Muslim graveyard where of course the Muslim leaders belongs is inappropriate. So his ideal, my solution that he recommends is to put the deceased, pregnant woman into a space between graigards so that she's neither in a place of unbelief nor in a place of belief.
And of course, logistically this was quite difficult. So in the end he recommends I think that she be buried in the Muslim graveyard. Okay, great. And the next bit is when he gets to the question of paradise.
And of course if traditional Muslim thought the non-Muslim do not go to paradise and Muslim do go to paradise. The question is for him whether what happens with children. And it's a very interesting discussion of this question in the term alibama, which he begins by talking about Muslim children. And he notes that Muslim children do go to paradise despite the fact that at that point they're not actually responsible for the faith, although they haven't really earned it.
They go to paradise anyway. And then he brings in a question of non-Muslim children who none Muslim children go to paradise because they haven't earned the punishment either. So they shouldn't go to hell, but they haven't earned the reward of paradise. And he's very interesting because he brings up ten different positions on this question and he goes through all of them and really engages with the pros of the conflict position and relating to wider arguments.
And I found it very interesting that he shows in his argumentation and his analysis of the positions, real sympathy for the position for the argument or the position that non-Muslim children enter paradise on the basis of their Muslim fritter and on the basis of the fact that they haven't chosen that unbelief themselves. So he likes this position and yet he doesn't see it as the correct one. The position that he actually goes for is a little bit more complicated. He argues that the children will be resurrected after their death in a state of moral maturity and intellectual competence and that they will then be asked to accept Islam or to reject it.
And of course, he's in a poem as intellectually mature adults. They will accept Islam, so they will ultimately enter paradise. And so in some ways he is guaranteeing their entrance into paradise. But I think it's very interesting that he doesn't do this, he doesn't allow them to enter as non-Muslim children.
His tricks of getting them in is to change them into competent intellectual adults who have embraced Islam. And in doing so, he's actually kept the nature of paradise as a Muslim space rather than limited the entrance of non-Muslims, which he would have done if he accepted their entrance on the basis of being innocent children. So this is one of the ways that I see him as really drawing boundaries between spaces that are Muslim spaces and spaces that are not Muslim spaces. And in some ways he's stricter than earlier teachers on this, although he often seems to be trying to find a way around these boundaries nonetheless.
Now I want to turn to another key category that you that really structured your discussion in chapters six and seven. And that category is what you call relational space and you talk about relational space in terms of personal interactions and also in terms of public performance. I was wondering if you could explain for a listen a bit what this means, relational space, if you could have a couple examples of this category and then what is in the themes of views and how does he engage with this particular sort of category of practices when it comes to Muslim non-Muslim spaces and their distinction. Okay, yeah, I saw him in the book as this English in between two main categories of space within the Darla Islam, the space of the space that was exclusive to one religion, Muslim spaces or non-Muslim spaces, and the space that was shared by Muslims, Christians and Jews.
I say shared, I didn't use that word in the book because it wasn't actually shared in the sense of everybody having equal portion. It's still very much dominated by Muslims, which is important to even a whole of thought. But he works on the assumption that Jews and Muslims and Christians have access to this space. And that's why I called it the space of interaction because he works on the premise of the interaction between the religions in these spaces.
And within this category of a space of interaction, I saw a further division between public spaces of interaction and will try the personal spaces of interaction. So the public space of interaction is what I saw in the last section of the book when he was talking about the pact of Ahmaud. So you can see, I mentioned the pact of Ahmaud earlier. It was a key institution for the regulation of non-Muslims.
And you can tell how much respect Nakhaim has for this agreement because he dedicates, I think, about a quarter of his book to discussing it. He gives two different transmissions of the entire list of regulations. So you actually have two different versions of the pact of Ahmaud in his book. And he makes notes of the differences, but that doesn't really affect for him the question of the documents authenticity.
He doesn't question the regulations of the pact, he doesn't criticize them. He focuses on interpreting them and relating them to his argument. And the way that he relates into his argument really highlights the importance of public representation in this space. So I don't know if you know the obligations in the pact of Ahmaud.
But many of them focus on this public spaces like marketplaces and the suite and the way that dominance should be expressed in these spaces. For example, one of the obligations in the pact was that the Christians shouldn't live in the houses that are higher than the houses of the Muslims. And this obligation doesn't seem to have any practical significance. And even though he actually goes into his question, he says he's discussed his questions that could be of practical relevance to the higher house of the Christian.
And he says, no, this is not the reason for the prohibition. The reason is, it says in the high end, that an ostentatious house can be a social prestige. And if he's not put in an underscore in the public space. And he gives similar reasons relating to the clothing of the Muslims, the house of the Muslims, to show how in this more public space, they should not be conveying an image of prestige or upon what comes through in this presentation then.
And that in these spaces that Muslims and non-muslims have access to, and where many people are there that can see it, high roughly between the religions has to be demonstrated in a spatial sense. The more audience there is, the more important it is that high roughly is shown through physical structures like buildings or the way that non-muslims dress and behave and the way that their religion is allowed to appear. That's why churches are a problem for the high end because there's such imposing buildings on the Muslim landscape and it contradicts the message of inferiority that he thinks that Christian buildings should convey. Also, Christian festivals is an important topic in Akhen, under the monk.
He's very concerned about Christian festivals being held, but the reason for his concern is not like in Tamiya, that Muslims might be drawn to these festivals, they might participate in them, and they might begin to adopt the practices of Christians in their own place. His concern, the concern of Nakhayim, is just that these festivals should not be dominating the public space the way that they do. The Christian should be celebrating in private and their religion should not be manifested in the public realm. So for him, this public space of interaction, which he interprets through the Pakravama, is a space in which the hierarchy between the religions has to be expressed spatially through the behaviors, through built structures.
He has a means of public showing that Islam is the final or the truth of religion. And this is really why we find some of his hasha language and his more aggressive tones. When he moves to the other category of relational space, I looked at which is more personal particularly for the private realm of households, shared households between a Muslim man and his one Muslim wife, or a convict and his one Christian family, he is a quite different logic. That was very interesting for me.
For example, when Nakhay was discussing the way that Mr. Man should treat his Christian wife and whether he should be allowed there to free them to have their own religion allowed to live in a life, for example. He's much more flexible. For example, this is something that I quite like in this book.
He says, the Muslim husband should let his wife think why, but she should win her mouth out before she kisses him. So, Nakhay in his in these contexts, he seems to be more concerned to maintain the rights of the parties involved, particularly the rights of the women and the rights of the non-Muslims as well. And he's less concerned about demonstrating the dominance or the power of one religion over another. But of course in these areas of activity or in these spaces, there's much less at stake because there's no audience.
So, when the performance aspect is gone, his approach changes. He becomes more pragmatic and he becomes also more sympathetic, I think, to the problems or the difficulties that even religious relations come great. Now, you've already talked about children a bit in terms of the afterlife, but you have an entire chapter in which you have a fascinating discussion about different matters to do with the need. There are too many details to follow us to really comprehensively come with that.
But many briefly, we'll talk a bit about, you know, why do you think thinking is so invested and so interested in the subject of children, especially the children? And you outline some key principles that he employs in terms of how he thinks about the status of children in the afterlife and the kind of the obligation for them to convert or not convert. And what are some of those principles through which he then again establishes this hierarchy that is at work throughout his text. But I can speak a bit about this specific aspect of his discussion on children and what kinds of principles does he employ in engaging this question of non-muslim than me children.
Yeah, thank you for that. I did find the question of non-muslim children in the realm of rhythm are really interesting. And if not playing as a poetry list, this topic was so detailed and so thoughtful that I found it fascinating the way that he responded to the problems in this area of interest. And I think part of it had to do with the fact that non-muslim children are people, they are gods of creation, they are potential believers, and get their purposes because they're not responsible for their faith.
And so in some ways they're important because of potential conflict, but they're also an arena or a space for testing other ideas about God's justice or about the nature of mankind. So there's so many other different issues that time gents on this question of non-muslim children. And he looks at two separate issues, first of all non-muslim children, before they die, and custody of children, when they should be allowed to convert and when they should be forced to convert, and then the question of non-muslim children after their death, which is what I referred to earlier. And his reasoning in relation to children before they die as a living children, and when they should convert and when they must convert, is very interesting because he sort of adjudicates between computing claims, the claim of a parent's over that child, the claim of the child or the inherent in the name of the child, and the claim of the space over the child is the child living in a Muslim space or in a non-muslim space.
So he considers various scenarios, and in each of these scenarios he looks at which of these principles comes into action and which of these principles has priority. One of them, for example, is if a child is orphaned, if his mother and father die, should he then be made into a Muslim because his parents aren't there, so the parents who had determined that he would not be a Muslim, now that their responsibility for him and their control over him is gone, because it not for him, can we then return him to what his original hope is within today, which is a Muslim. And the main thing, the main thing really on this was no, he would just be transferred to the custody of somebody else in his family. But even if not for him, it's more reluctant to follow this.
He argues quite subtly, but quite firmly for the fact that once a Muslim child parents have died, is that non-muslim child is living in the god of Islam or Islam of Islam, he should be transferred to Muslim because the fifth-right and the space now have the claim over the challenge. That's just one example. I think if I bring in more examples, I think it's going to get confusing. So, I think that's the final question.
I was wondering if you can sort of take a step back and maybe reflect a bit on, you know, this very interesting study that you've done, it's very detailed and theoretically exciting study. What are some of the larger take-home points that you would want leaders and listeners to get in terms of what you have tried to accomplish in terms of how we think about interreligious differences, interreligious differences, in terms of how we think about reading these early modern texts, etc. Or maybe depending on how you want to characterize that, it's like period. So, what are some of the larger conceptual take-home points that you would want leaders to get from your examination of your examination of the Al-Khan-Anadimah?
I think one of the main arguments that I made for the book is that Aqem-Anadimah is not just a collection of the rulings about non-muslim subjects. And that's how it's been treated until now in an after-second day literature. It's been treated as a sort of resourceful that people have helped themselves to without really asking what the book is in itself. And of course, it is a compendium of rulings under early teachings.
But I think you see it only as it's to ignore the authorial agency in the book. Even though Kain works from earlier sources, but his choice about which source to use, the way that he edits the source, how he relates to the teachings to other arguments, or these influence the way that they read and understands the text. As was the fact that some of the sources that he uses are really not legal sources at all. For example, he has a lump spoon of anecdotes about non-muslim bureaucrats and the harm that they do if they're employed by the Muslim state.
And we don't find that in any way that he will compend with. So, his choice of sources is a little bit eclectic. And in addition to this also the way that he comments on his teaching, he really shows his author or really an agency as well. He hardly ever gives a teaching without telling his readers his own opinion of it.
Whether it's called over hard, how it relates to other arguments. Sometimes he uses a certain ruling as a springboard for his own discussion, which will go on to pages. So, to see it just as a collection of earlier material is really not accurate. And the other thing, or the other problem with speaking in this way, is that there isn't much evidence that this was a very normal protect.
I've been quite enough of research on the later reception of this book. And there's hardly any reference to it in later ways. So, I think this is one indication that his book either did not intend to be circulated or it wasn't very popular, but it wasn't why we received your comment. So, we need to be careful because we see this as a reflection of rulings that were being applied or can be discussed in the whole researcher.
So, that's one key argument that we definitely make about this book. The other really important argument that I've seen in the famous making is this is answering questions that have been shown as relevant in the whole contemporary century, which is, do we even need an instance in the realm of Islam? Should they be here? Did they have a right to slavery?
And if we do slavery, what term do we give them? How do we incorporate them into the society? And this is a really key question for him. It's used to have become relevant around the time that he was writing.
And I think it's the same working on an answer to this question. And part of his answer argues for the apologetic relevance of having this introduced in a Muslim society. And the apologetic relevance species in their spatial demonstration of inferiority. This is why the him space, he plays such a key role in his translation of rulings because it's a way of visually demonstrating religious hierarchy.
And religious hierarchy, the him is a key part of proving the finality of Islam. I'm not sure about that at the point, but it's good. Absolutely. Thank you.
So, as we're coming to the end of our time, Antonio, I was wondering if you could share with us a bit about what you might be planning as your next project or the composition of this fantastic book, what might be the next project that we're thinking about? I'm working on something very different now, actually. I've moved out of Syria, I'm now working on North Africa, and I've moved away from the 14th century to the 9th and 8th century. And I'm looking at the integration of the Earth, into the Islamic Empire.
And the processes of this education in North Africa generally actually mostly conquests this region. And I'm looking at slavery, sacred roots, and the relevant Islamic roots and boundaries. So it's really different, really different, it's also different methodology. But I hope to be able to bring it back to my understanding of the Islamic roots and the relevance of legal rulings to slavery and the regulation of slavery.
Mind being the replaced space and religious hierarchy in Iman al-Kayyams Ahkam Ahla-Dimma by Professor Antonio Bosenkwet, published by Brill Press in 2020. Thank you so much, Antonio, for coming on the new books network, for so eloquently discussing this really important significant book for scholars of Islam, Islamic law, religious studies more broadly speaking. This is a really important and critical study, and I'm sure I understand it's really benefited from your area-wide commentary on this book. So thank you so much for coming on the book.
Thank you so much, Hadi Mei. I've really enjoyed it. So this was my conversation with Professor Antonio Bosenkwet about a wonderful new book, Minding the Days. I hope you enjoyed this episode of your favorite podcast, New Books and Islamic Studies.
And then you will also join us next time for another fresh episode of New Books and Islamic Studies, which operates online through the new books network. Until then, take your stay well. And this is your host, Shire Alitari, signing off. A safer Ontario means more police and prosecutors making sure my card doesn't get stolen.
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