It’s clear that one of the problems concerning Muslims is authority in other words Muslim leadership and the Islamic authenticity of that leadership. Abou El Fadl gave us a degree of insight into the primary sources of this disintegration of Muslim leaders and authentic Islamic authority.

But if this is the problem what is the solution? Is the solution something that the West can assist with or is the West the protagonist of the problem? Throughout the classical period Muslim jurists played a rather dynamic negotiate role in society.

The often acted as a medium between the various social structures and political structures. There were at times allied to the interests and concerns of one to the other. Which is why Abou El Fadl describes classic juristic culture in traditional Islam was “semi- autonomous”.

Hamza Yusuf, arguably the America’s most recognized Islamic scholar, weighed in on this issue during a 2003 lecture in Canada saying, “What I think is important for Muslims today-especially the scholars is to begin to look at our own legal tradition and this is what I think Dr. Feldman [the notable U.S. Constitutional Lawyer and Professor at Harvard University Law] was saying in his book, [After Jihad: America and the Struggle for Islamic democracy] and begin to derive from their own tradition those things that will facilitate their movement into the modern world to be successful and productive members of an increasingly globalised community”.

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Imam Hamza could have been a bit more precise in his analysis of the final solution to the problem Dr. Abou El Fadl mentions. However, what he did do was to address where Muslims should concentrate in order to begin forward progress toward developing a sustainable sovereign society and also an integral faction of the modern world.

I believe, like most if not all Muslims, that our religion provides a means for governing which guarantees our primary freedoms and inalienable human rights in a way that may in time surpass liberal democracy. However, this can only become a reality if the institution of Islamic law can be implemented in its proper functional role, that being free from State control, authority by proxy or under the thumb of secular tyrants.