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Islamic Internet ArchivesARCHIVE OF MODERN ISLAMIC THOUGHT
Wael Hallaq

Wael Hallaq

وائل حلاق

b. 1955 · Palestine / Canada / United States · Historian of Islamic law, legal theorist, critic of modernity

Wael B. Hallaq was born in 1955 in Nazareth to a Palestinian Christian family. He studied political science and history at the University of Haifa and then moved to the University of Washington in Seattle, where he completed his doctorate in 1983 with coursework spanning history, Near Eastern studies and law.

He joined McGill University’s Institute of Islamic Studies in 1985, rising to full professor and later holding the James McGill chair in Islamic law. In 2009 he moved to Columbia University as Avalon Foundation Professor in the Humanities, teaching ethics, law and political thought.

Hallaq first became widely known through his 1984 article questioning the idea that the “gate of ijtihad” had closed in medieval Sunni law. Across A History of Islamic Legal Theories (1997), Authority, Continuity, and Change in Islamic Law (2001) and The Origins and Evolution of Islamic Law (2005) he described the Sharia as a flexible, self-renewing tradition anchored in jurists and local communities rather than in rulers. Shari’a: Theory, Practice, Transformations (2009) then examined how colonial rule and the modern state dismantled that system.

His later work turns to a broader critique of modernity. The Impossible State (2013) contends that the sovereign nation-state cannot house the moral order that Islamic governance presupposed, a thesis that provoked wide debate among Muslim intellectuals and was translated into Arabic. Restating Orientalism (2018) and Reforming Modernity (2019), on the Moroccan philosopher Taha Abdurrahman, extend the argument to the foundations of modern knowledge and ethics, and Radical Separation of Powers (2026) revisits Islamic constitutional history. Although not a Muslim, Hallaq is among the most cited contemporary scholars of Islamic law, and his writings are read closely in debates over Islamic politics and decolonial thought.

Photo: Xsenesah, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

Archived 14 October 2026 · Biography sources: en.wikipedia.org · aljazeera.net

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Archived 23 October 2026 · Sources: the Wikipedia article of each author and the biographies on this site. Whole network

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Works

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Books 14

TRANSLATION 1993 · English
Ibn Taymiyya Against the Greek Logicians

Annotated English translation, with a substantial introduction, of al-Suyuti's abridgement of Ibn Taymiyya's refutation of Aristotelian logic.

Archived 14 October 2026 · Source: archive.org

Cite

Hallaq, Wael. Ibn Taymiyya Against the Greek Logicians. 1993. Archived 14 October 2026 in Islamic Internet Archives: Archive of Modern Islamic Thought. https://islamicarchives.org/authors/hallaq/#hallaq-ibn-taymiyya-against-the-greek-logicians

No free copy online
BOOK 2001 · English
Authority, Continuity, and Change in Islamic Law

Examines how the legal schools built the authority of their founders and how jurists nevertheless produced legal change from within the tradition.

Archived 14 October 2026 · Source: archive.org

Cite

Hallaq, Wael. Authority, Continuity, and Change in Islamic Law. 2001. Archived 14 October 2026 in Islamic Internet Archives: Archive of Modern Islamic Thought. https://islamicarchives.org/authors/hallaq/#hallaq-authority-continuity-and-change-in-islamic-law

No free copy online
COLLECTION 2003 · Japanese
Was the Gate of Ijtihad Closed? The Early Essays on the History of Islamic Legal Theories

Japanese-language collection of Hallaq's early essays on Islamic legal theory, edited and translated by Atsushi Okuda.

Archived 14 October 2026 · Source: not yet recorded

Cite

Hallaq, Wael. Was the Gate of Ijtihad Closed? The Early Essays on the History of Islamic Legal Theories. 2003. Archived 14 October 2026 in Islamic Internet Archives: Archive of Modern Islamic Thought. https://islamicarchives.org/authors/hallaq/#hallaq-was-the-gate-of-ijtihad-closed-the-early

No free copy online
ANTHOLOGY 2004 · English
The Formation of Islamic Law

Edited collection of key scholarly articles on the early formation of Islamic law, with an introduction by Hallaq.

Archived 14 October 2026 · Source: not yet recorded

Cite

Hallaq, Wael. The Formation of Islamic Law. 2004. Archived 14 October 2026 in Islamic Internet Archives: Archive of Modern Islamic Thought. https://islamicarchives.org/authors/hallaq/#hallaq-the-formation-of-islamic-law

No free copy online
BOOK 2005 · English
The Origins and Evolution of Islamic Law

Traces the emergence of Islamic law out of Near Eastern legal practice and early Muslim society up to the consolidation of the legal schools.

Archived 14 October 2026 · Source: archive.org

Cite

Hallaq, Wael. The Origins and Evolution of Islamic Law. 2005. Archived 14 October 2026 in Islamic Internet Archives: Archive of Modern Islamic Thought. https://islamicarchives.org/authors/hallaq/#hallaq-the-origins-and-evolution-of-islamic-law

No free copy online
BOOK 2009 · English
An Introduction to Islamic Law

A concise introduction to the history and structure of Islamic law and its fate in the modern period.

Archived 14 October 2026 · Source: archive.org

Cite

Hallaq, Wael. An Introduction to Islamic Law. 2009. Archived 14 October 2026 in Islamic Internet Archives: Archive of Modern Islamic Thought. https://islamicarchives.org/authors/hallaq/#hallaq-an-introduction-to-islamic-law

No free copy online
BOOK 2009 · English
Shari'a: Theory, Practice, Transformations

A comprehensive account of the Sharia as a pre-modern moral-legal system and of its dismantling and transformation under colonialism and the modern nation-state.

Archived 14 October 2026 · Source: not yet recorded

Cite

Hallaq, Wael. Shari'a: Theory, Practice, Transformations. 2009. Archived 14 October 2026 in Islamic Internet Archives: Archive of Modern Islamic Thought. https://islamicarchives.org/authors/hallaq/#hallaq-sharia-theory-practice-transformations

No free copy online
BOOK 2013 · English
The Impossible State: Islam, Politics, and Modernity's Moral Predicament

Argues that the modern nation-state is structurally incompatible with the moral paradigm of Islamic governance, making an 'Islamic state' in the modern sense a contradiction.

Archived 14 October 2026 · Source: not yet recorded

Cite

Hallaq, Wael. The Impossible State: Islam, Politics, and Modernity's Moral Predicament. 2013. Archived 14 October 2026 in Islamic Internet Archives: Archive of Modern Islamic Thought. https://islamicarchives.org/authors/hallaq/#hallaq-the-impossible-state-islam-politics-and-modernitys-moral

No free copy online
BOOK 2018 · English
Restating Orientalism: A Critique of Modern Knowledge

Extends Said's critique by arguing that Orientalism is rooted in the epistemic foundations of modern academic knowledge rather than in politics alone.

Archived 14 October 2026 · Source: not yet recorded

Cite

Hallaq, Wael. Restating Orientalism: A Critique of Modern Knowledge. 2018. Archived 14 October 2026 in Islamic Internet Archives: Archive of Modern Islamic Thought. https://islamicarchives.org/authors/hallaq/#hallaq-restating-orientalism-a-critique-of-modern-knowledge

No free copy online
BOOK 2019 · Arabic
Al-Qur'an wa-al-Shari'a: Nahwa dusturiyya Islamiyya jadida القرآن والشريعة: نحو دستورية إسلامية جديدة

Arabic book reflecting on the Qur'an as the moral foundation of the Sharia and proposing a new Islamic constitutionalism.

Archived 14 October 2026 · Source: not yet recorded

Cite

Hallaq, Wael. Al-Qur'an wa-al-Shari'a: Nahwa dusturiyya Islamiyya jadida. 2019. Archived 14 October 2026 in Islamic Internet Archives: Archive of Modern Islamic Thought. https://islamicarchives.org/authors/hallaq/#hallaq-al-quran-wa-al-sharia-nahwa-dusturiyya-islamiyya

No free copy online
BOOK 2019 · English
Reforming Modernity: Ethics and the New Human in the Philosophy of Abdurrahman Taha

A study of the Moroccan philosopher Taha Abdurrahman's ethical critique of modernity and its relevance to global debates.

Archived 14 October 2026 · Source: not yet recorded

Cite

Hallaq, Wael. Reforming Modernity: Ethics and the New Human in the Philosophy of Abdurrahman Taha. 2019. Archived 14 October 2026 in Islamic Internet Archives: Archive of Modern Islamic Thought. https://islamicarchives.org/authors/hallaq/#hallaq-reforming-modernity-ethics-and-the-new-human-in

No free copy online
BOOK 2026 · English
Radical Separation of Powers: A History of Islamic Constitutionalism

A history of constitutional practice in Islamic governance from the ninth to the eighteenth century, emphasising the separation of legal from political power.

Archived 14 October 2026 · Source: simonandschuster.co.uk

Cite

Hallaq, Wael. Radical Separation of Powers: A History of Islamic Constitutionalism. 2026. Archived 14 October 2026 in Islamic Internet Archives: Archive of Modern Islamic Thought. https://islamicarchives.org/authors/hallaq/#hallaq-radical-separation-of-powers-a-history-of-islamic

No free copy online

Papers 1

PAPER 1984 · English
Was the Gate of Ijtihad Closed?

Influential journal article arguing that independent legal reasoning (ijtihad) never ceased in Sunni jurisprudence, contrary to the long-held view that its 'gate' was closed around the tenth century.

Archived 14 October 2026 · Source: not yet recorded

Cite

Hallaq, Wael. Was the Gate of Ijtihad Closed?. 1984. Archived 14 October 2026 in Islamic Internet Archives: Archive of Modern Islamic Thought. https://islamicarchives.org/authors/hallaq/#hallaq-was-the-gate-of-ijtihad-closed

No free copy online