Global Islamic legal discourse and a Muslim migrant

The article analyzes Muslim jurists’ attempts of the two most influential contemporary Sunni trends (“al-Wasatiyya” and the non-radical wing of “al-Salafiyyа”) to form the attitude of Muslim migrants and representatives of Muslim minorities to the new social reality in the non-Muslim countries that receive them. Salafism was formed at the beginning of the twentieth century as a response to the colonization of the Muslim East. The concept of “al-Wasatiyya” (“moderate, balanced”, wasat - lit. Arab. “center”) appeared for the first time in 1960 in the work of graduate Yusuf al-Qaradawi of the famous al-Azhar University. Recently this concept has gained popularity not only in the Muslim intellectual milieu (in particular, among the teachers of al-Azhar), but also in the governmental administrative practices of certain Muslim states (Kuwait, Malaysia, etc.) A Muslim migrant appeared in the programs of “al-Wasatiyya” and “as-Salafiyya” in the 1970s. Legalists of “as-Salafiyya” believe that the reason for the appearance of a Muslim in non-Muslim countries should be exclusively in his mission as an Islamizer. According to the ideas of “al-Wasatiyya”, a Muslim can come to non-Muslim countries within the framework of educational, professional, or business programs, and the proselytizing mission can become his personal choice. Lawyers of both directions are building their positions on the provisions of the Quran and hadiths, but their approach to the formation of socio-legal norms on this basis vary considerably. If representatives of “as-Salafiyya” stand for literal treatment of sacred narratives, then “al-Wasatiyya” defends their contextual interpretation of the sacral statements to introduce into the changing social reality of the ummah balanced socio-legal norms. The first assigned into social practice the medieval concept of adherence to the ideals of early Islam and the abandonment of altered legal norms (wala wa-l-bara), while the latter developed the “Fiqh of the Muslim minority” to facilitate the life of Muslims under secular constitutionalism. The clash, the intersection and, undoubtedly, interference of the doctrinal positions, intellectual interests and strategies of attracting supporters of “al-Salafiyya” and “al-Wasatiyya” are a reflection of a much broader front of the struggle for the very future of the ummah. At the same time, this phenomenon is the most significant manifestation of the discursive tradition of the Sharia, which never existed in the form of a clearly fixed code of socio-legal and moral norms and regulations in the past.