Belief as Status: Premodern Islamic Law, Duties, and the Martyr Conundrum

Abstract The normative universe of the premodern Islamic legal tradition revolves around duties. These duties are determined by an individual’s status both as an autonomous entity and as part of the collective. The duties one owes and those that one is owed, are primarily constructed around belief. Belief, and its absence, function as the primary vehicles for affirming or denying an individual’s place within the moral community. In the jurists discourse on warfare, during the fifth ah/eleventh ce and sixth ah/twelfth ce centuries, we find an illustrative example of how belief dictates the duties that must be performed. Who is obligated to fight, who must be fought, and what obligations are owed in death all depend, though not exclusively, on the belief status of the relevant actors. In the process jurists constructed status hierarchies based on belief and, as in the case of martyrs, negotiated a delicate balance between preserving the sacredness of belief status and accounting for the pragmatic requirements of the battlefield.