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" The riddle of 'Umar ibn al-Khattab in Bukhari's "Kitab al-Jami' as-Sahih" (and the question of the routinization of prophetic charisma) "
Linda Lee Kern
W. A. Graham
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Latin Dissertation
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English
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| Record Number
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1112798
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TLpq304245225
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| Main Entry
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Linda Lee Kern
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W. A. Graham
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| Title & Author
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The riddle of 'Umar ibn al-Khattab in Bukhari's "Kitab al-Jami' as-Sahih" (and the question of the routinization of prophetic charisma)\ Linda Lee KernW. A. Graham
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| College
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Harvard University
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| Date
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1996
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1996
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Ph.D.
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439-439 p.
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| Abstract
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This thesis is a response to the riddle of 'Umar ibn al-Khattab in Bukhari 's Kitab al-Jami'it as-Sahi h: Namely, how is it possible for 'Umar to be at once the staunchest defender of the prophetic tradition and yet, at the same time, in disagreement with the Prophet himself? Just how is 'Umar able to use the Prophet's message to justify the religio-legal state that he creates, when the Prophet's message is actually heterogenous to it in nearly every respect? Part I situates 'Umar's riddle as a paradigmatic case of the Weberian notion of the Veralltaglichung of charisma. For 'Umar's traditional authority is not only depicted as being "necessary for ... (the Prophet's charisma) to endure" in these texts, but also at the same time nonetheless "sharply opposed" or even "the direct antithesis" to it.2 We suggest, however, that 'Umar's riddle ultimately serves to radicalize the notion of the "routinization of charisma" itself: It reveals three specific ways in which Weber's model participates in the process of institutionalization that it intends only to describe. Part II establishes at length that the narratives in Bukhari 's canonical Hadi th collection do attest both to 'Umar's defense of the Prophet's tradition, as well as to his growing disagreement with and eventual contradiction of the Prophet himself. Part III explains 'Umar's dual relation to the Prophet as a consequence of his desire to fix the divine message in some definite way, or to "reify" it. Curiously, precisely insofar as he intended to preserve Muhammad's message from innovation, he achieved what he had intended to avoid, namely its radical alteration. In wanting to hear what the Prophet had to say definitively, he silenced its tidings. For like conscience, a message is only a message when it continually comes or arrives, and can never be finished and remain as such. Moreover, we isolate four specific mechanisms by which 'Umar reified the Prophet's call as a definite thing: (1) binary division (or reification by the principle of non-contradiction), (2) serial ordering (or reification by a linear, hierarchical sequencing and the quantification of human value), (3) generalizeable laws (or reification by thinking the call as a rule) and (4) the Book (or reification by the canonization of a Book which guarantees a fully present Truth). Each mechanism has in common with the others that it attempts to understand the Prophet's message as a fully present object of knowledge. Instead of being vulnerable to the prophetic call that is continually in the process of arriving. 'Umar attempted to fill in a definite and especially quantifiable content that could be legislated or calculated at will. Part IV contemplates the implications of these findings for the history and sociology of religion. We take up not just the insights it may give us into the "how" of what Weber called the Veralltaglichung of charisma. But we also contemplate the way in which our thinking itself about religion in the academy may serve unwittingly to bring back in the reification that we try only to reveal. ftnMax Weber, On Charisma and Institution Building, trans. and ed. Talcott Parsons (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968), pp. 51-52. 2Ibid., pp. 55-61.
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@`Umar ibn al Kha
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cx ab
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d t
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Hadith
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Islam
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Philosophy, religion and theology
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