On the Authority of the Legal Tradition in Contemporary Jewish and Muslim Discourses through the Example of Interreligious Marriage
This research project addresses the question of how contemporary Jewish and Muslim denominations renegotiate the authority of their respective legal traditions. The focus here lies on the issue of interreligious marriages, which once counted as unnegotiable in both religions, but is today interpreted in different ways. Proceeding from the observation that both religions established binding legal norms in the premodern era, and that these norms were increasingly questioned in the modern era, the project examines how the various denominations – orthodox, conservative/traditional, and reform-oriented – deal with these challenges.
A comparison reveals that both traditions, although they were subject to different historical developments, reacted in a structurally similar way: through rejection, preservation, or mediation between tradition and modernity. Thus, for example, inner-Jewish debates on the authoritativeness of religious norms already began in the early nineteenth century in the context of emancipation and the Enlightenment in Germany. This early confrontation with modernity led to the emergence of denominational divides between orthodox, conservative, and reform-oriented movements. By contrast, Muslim scholars were only confronted with comparable questions about a century later, under pressure from colonial invasions, which resulted in chronologically later but otherwise similar debates.
The investigation distinguishes between deontological (compulsory) and epistemic (advisory) authority in religious teachings and analyzes how various movements deal with these categories. Upon closer inspection, attitudes to interreligious marriages turn out not to be primarily concerned with tolerance or intolerance toward people of other faiths, but rather with the protection of one’s religious identity, which is intended to ensure the endurance of one’s own community.
Through its comparative analysis of individual scholars from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the project contributes to a nuanced perspective on contemporary processes of negotiating between tradition and modernity in both religions.
Research project as part of the »Ignaz Goldziher Program for Jewish-Muslim Studies«
