Book Review: 'Islamic Legal Orthodoxy' by Prof. Devin Stewart

In Islamic Legal Orthodoxy, Stewart explores the process by which Shiite jurists participated in the mainstream of Islamic jurisprudence and were influenced by Sunni legal doctrines. He identifies three main reactions to Sunni legal definitions of othodoxy and the concept of consensus on which it was based. The Akhbaris rejected Sunni legal consensus and juristic authority for a scripture-based system; many Shiite outwardly accepted the ground rules of Sunni legal consensus and joined the Shafii school of jurisprudence; a third option was to adopt the concept of consensus to create a fifth, Shiite, legal system.
The development of the Sunni legal system effectively set the ground rules for the marginal sects negotiation of their identity with respect to Islamic legal orthodoxy. Accordingly, Shiite jurists developed a legal institution that is structurally similar to the four Sunni madhhabs and even today serves as means to position themselves in the Muslim world. Stewart points to an underlying tension in Shiite intellectual history between assimilationist and nativist impulses in the debate over consensus, dissmulation (taqiyyah) and the lives of certain Shiite scholars who lived and studies among Sunnis.