This paper investigates the concept of
Fiqh al-Aqallīyāt, jurisprudence for Muslims living as religious minorities in non-Muslim lands, classifying its advocates into several categories and analyzes its social meaning from the standpoint of the religious market theory. The variance in methodology among the advocates of
Fiqh al-Aqallīyāt is big to the extent that they do not have any shared ideas about it. While some of them present methodology innovative enough to advocate this new discipline of
fiqh, others do not. This is to say that what induces them to propose
Fiqh al-Aqallīyāt is not any ideological cause but the religious market. In the religious market of Islam in non-Muslim societies today, the influence of the ulama is increasingly limited: their traditional speeches do not strike a chord of sympathy, while Muslim thinkers who are not ulama are gaining growing popularity among not only Muslims but also non-Muslims. Therefore, it can be safely said that the advocates of
Fiqh al-Aqallīyāt are making use of this terminology to make rulings on the momentous daily problems faced by Muslim minorities and to do so in the traditional language of
Sharī‘a.
Fiqh al-Aqallīyāt can be regarded as a strategic weapon invented by the ulama to survive the competitive contemporary religious market of Islam.
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