The current near collapse of the Arab state system is but the most recent manifestations of an enduring failure to adapt to the exigencies of a externally imposed but inescapable modernisation process. At the heart of that systemic failure is the lack of an effective public law, as Western legal transplants have not worked and an indigenous public law based on religious tradition has proven elusive.

This presentation looks at the development of Islamic law (fiqh) as an essentially private endeavour of pious individuals in terms both of substance, procedure and social actors appealing to the dogmatic triad of Qur’an, sunna, and shari’a (read: fiqh). This body of norms is contrasted with the relatively shallow dogmatic effort to systematise public law under the dogmatic headings of ta’zir, siyasa shar’ia and siyar. This presentation argues that whatever the philosophical value of this century-long struggle over hermeneutics it is unlikely to yield satisfactory explanations, let alone answers to the enduring crisis of governance in virtually all Muslim-majority states.