Legal authenticity, cultural insulation and undemocratic rule. ʿAbd-al-Razzāq Aḥmad al-Sanhūrī’s (1895–1971) Sharia project and its misrepresentation in Egypt

The current debate in the Arab and Islamic world about the »application of the Sharia«, at least as far as it refers to the Arab countries and their respective legal systems, can be understood as an indigenised discourse, originally stemming from a scientific project of the international discipline of comparative law, which has gone astray during the process of indigenisation or localisation.The original scientific purpose has been abandoned and partly emptied of its meaning, in order to redirect the whole project and instrumentalise its modern reputation in a conflict between adherents of an authoritarian society and those of a more liberal leaning. In the conflict between supporters and opponents of legal transfer the Egyptian jurist ʿAbd-al-Razzāq Aḥmad al-Sanhūrī (1895–1971) has become a symbol, both of the establishment of a positive legal system and at the same time of the reintroduction of reformed Sharia law. Yet of al-Sanhūrī's original Sharia project the democratic and human-rights-based impetus was lost by the following generation of Egyptian jurists, after the 'Free Officers' came to power in 1952 and established an authoritarian regime which was to last until the Egyptian revolution of Mīdān al-Taḥrīr in the first months of 2011.