Drawing on ethnographic research, Living Sharia examines the role of sharia in the sociopolitical processes of contemporary Malaysia. The book traces the contested implementation of Islamic family and criminal laws and sharia economics to provide cultural frameworks for understanding sharia among Muslims and non-Muslims. Timothy Daniels explores how the way people think about sharia is often entangled with notions about race, gender equality, nationhood, liberal pluralism, citizenship, and universal human rights. He reveals that Malaysians' ideas about sharia are not isolated from-nor always opposed to-liberal pluralism and secularism. Living Sharia will be of interest to scholars as well as to policy makers, consultants, and professionals working with global NGOs.

The book explores the relationship between Muslims, the Common Law and Shari'ah post-9/11. The book looks at the accommodation of Shari'ah Law within Western Common Law legal traditions and the role of the judiciary, in particular, in drawing boundaries for secular democratic states with Muslim populations who want resolutions to conflicts that also comply with the dictates of their faith. Salim Farrar and Ghena Krayem consider the question of recognition of Shari'ah by looking at how the flexibilities that exists in both the Common Law and Shari'ah provide unexplored avenues for navigation and accommodation. The issue is explored in a comparative context across several jurisdictions and case law is examined in the contexts of family law, business and crime from selected jurisdictions with significant Muslim minority populations including: Australia, Canada, England and Wales, and the United States. The book examines how Muslims and the broader community have framed their claims for recognition against a backdrop of terrorism fears, and how Common Law judiciaries have responded within their constitutional and statutory confines and also within the contemporary contexts of demands for equality, neutrality and universal human rights. Acknowledging the inherent pragmatism, flexibility and values of the Common Law, the authors argue that the controversial issue of accommodation of Shari'ah is not necessarily one that requires the establishment of a separate and parallel legal system.

This 8-volume series is the author's abridged version of his longer work with the same title, spanning a 25-year study of the main sources of Islamic teachings: the Qur'an and the authentic sunnah. The author's study comprised 14 great anthologies of hadiths, but in his book he only rarely includes hadiths from any anthology other than the two most authentic ones of al-Bukhari and Muslim. This series will illustrate the status of the Muslim woman that is greatly different from what is assumed in most Muslim societies today. The Prophet established complete equality between men and women, with both having their respective special functions. This volume draws the features of the Muslim Woman in everyday social life in accordance to the Qur'an and Sunnah drawing upon specific examples of incidents as well as different prominent female figures in Islam during the Prophet's lifetime. It shows that much of what we imagine to be Islamic rules are no more than social or cultural tradition.

This book is methodologically unique in scholarly literature on Muslim society. Its originality lies in the fact that the rich material offered by the shari'a courts is given a thorough analysis with a view to drawing conclusions about the present-day phenomena in Arab society and processes that the society has been undergoing in modern times.Aharon Layish examines every aspect of the social status of Muslim women that finds expression in the shari'a courts: the age of marriage, stipulations inserted in the marriage contract, dower, polygamy, maintenance and obedience, divorce, custody of the children, guardianship, and succession. Each chapter opens with a short legal introduction based on all the sources of law applying in shari'a courts, followed by social analyses and a study of the attitudes and approaches of the qadis, or Muslim religious judges. Layish examines the relationship between shari'a and Israeli legislation: Do shari'a courts have regard to the provisions of Israeli law? What is the relationship between shari'a and social custom, and which is decisive in regard to Israeli Muslim women? To what extent does Israeli law actually affect Israeli Muslim women? What is the attitude of the qadis, toward Israeli legislation?Women and Islamic Law in a Non-Muslim State is an important and original study that will be of interest to students and scholars of Islamic law, comparative law, sociology, and modernization.

Can there be God-conscious organizational behaviour in the real world of today's capitalist corporations and the alternatives? In this overview of God-consciousness as a moral-awareness model of preference formation, functions, structures, and programs of organization within the purview of institutions and society, the authors explain and compare the major ethical issues of organizational behaviour and structure in Islamic economic theory and application. By analysing the nature of inclusive organizations and institutions, and the ethical preferences in Islamic choice framework, the authors from Saudi Arabia, Australia, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Canada, Indonesia and the UK, can highlight individual aspects to show whether capitalist organizational behaviour is sustainable. They describe how The Tawhidi epistemological framework governing conscious moral decision-making by institutions and organization, are used to establish the meaning and potential application of the concept of sustainability, and whether organizational moral objectives achieve their goals of life-fulfilment development, Poverty alleviation and the equitable distribution of wealth and resources.

Within the global phenomenon of the (re)emergence of religion into issues of public debate, one of the most salient issues confronting contemporary Muslim societies is how to relate the legal and political heritage that developed in pre-modern Islamic polities to the political order of the modern states in which Muslims now live. This work seeks to develop a framework for addressing this issue. The central argument is that liberal theory, and in particular justice as discourse, can be normatively useful in Muslim contexts for relating religion, law and state. Just as Muslim contexts have developed historically, and continue to develop today, the same is the case with the requisites of liberal theory, and this may allow for liberal choices to be made in a manner that is not a renunciation of Muslim heritage.

This book shows how political and administrative forces shaped the way justice was applied in medieval Egypt. It introduces the model that evolved during the 7th to the 12th centuries, which involved four judicial institutions: the cadi; the mazalim (court of complaint); the police/shurta (responsible for criminal justice); and the hisba (Islamised market law) administrated by the muhtasib (market supervisor). Literary and non-literary sources are used to highlight how these institutions worked in real-time situations such as the famine of 1024 5, which posed tremendous challenges to the market supervisors in Cairo. The inner workings of the court of complaint during the 11th 12th-century Fatimid state are revealed through an array of documentary sources. And non-Muslim communities, their courts and their sphere of responsibilities are treated as integral to how justice was dispensed in medieval Islam. Documentary sources offer significant insights into these issues and illuminate the scope and limits of non-Muslim self-rule/judicial autonomy.

In early 20th-century Yemen, a sizable Jewish population was subject to sumptuary laws and social restrictions. Jews regularly came into contact with Islamic courts and Muslim jurists, by choice and by necessity, became embroiled in the most intimate details of their Jewish neighbors lives. Mark S. Wagner draws on autobiographical writings to study the careers of three Jewish intermediaries who used their knowledge of Islamic law to manipulate the shari a for their own benefit and for the good of their community. The result is a fresh perspective on the place of religious minorities in Muslim societies."

Peaceful legal and political 'changing of the guards' is taken for granted in developed democracies, but is not evident everywhere. As a relatively new democracy, marred by long periods of military rule, Bangladesh has been encountering serious problems because of a prevailing culture of mistrust, weak governance institutions, constant election manipulation and a peculiar socio-political history, which between 1990 and 2011 led to a unique form of transitional remedy in the form of an unelected neutral 'caretaker covernment' (CTG) during electoral transitions. This book provides a contextual analysis of the CTG mechanism including its inception, operation, manipulation by the government of the day and abrupt demise. It queries whether this constitutional provision, even if presently abolished after overseeing four acceptable general elections, actually remains a crucial tool to safeguard free and fair elections in Bangladesh. Given the backdrop of the culture of mistrust, the author examines whether holding national elections without a CTG, or an umpire of some kind, can settle the issue of credibility of a given government. The book portrays that even the management of elections is a matter of applying pluralist approaches. Considering the historical legacy and contemporary political trajectory of Bangladesh, the cause of deep-rooted mistrust is examined to better understand the rationale for the requirement, emergence and workings of the CTG structure. The book unveils that it is not only the lack of nation-building measures and governments' wish to remain in power at any cost which lay behind the problems that Bangladesh faces today. Part of the problem is also the flawed logic of nation-building on the foundation of Western democratic norms which may be unsuitable in a South Asian cultural environment. Although democratic transitions, on the crutch of the CTG, have been useful in moments of crisis, its abolition creates the need for

This book is an anthropologist's field study of the new court set up in Singapore to deal with matrimonial suits (chiefly divorce) among Muslims. The study is based on careful observation of the court in action, and analyses in detail the relationship between the reformist aims of the new law and the values and expectations of litigants. The book takes its departure from the argument developed in Dr Djamour's earlier work, Malay Kinship and Mamage in Singapore (Athlone Press, 1959; paperback edition 1965), and discusses the effect of recent attempts to promote the stability of Muslim marriage. Social scientists, lawyers, students of Islam, and those interested in Malayan problems will find in this book the same qualities that distinguished Dr Djamour's previous study -- lively and sympathetic descriptive powers joined to an ability for clear factual analysis.

The importance of language and its use in legal reasoning in Islamic law is explored in this legal text. Covering such topics as linguistic principles and legal rulings, the clarity and ambiguity of linguistic terms, the general and specific qualities of words, and the ambiguity and clarity of selected terms, this linguistic study places the discussion of Islamic language and law into its context, introducing fundamental principles of Islamic jurisprudence and its development, branches, importance, and relationship with the other Islamic sciences. Readers will learn about the tools developed by Islamic scholars in making the law, the methods used in Islamic legislation, and the sources of Islamic law.

The contemporary finance deals mainly with multilateral and multi-counterparty transactions. Islamic Jurisprudence (Fiqh) has yet to develop its conceptualization of this modality of financing. Thus far, it has become a norm for large financing projects to rely on a complex structure of interconnected bilateral contracts that in totality becomes opaque, complex and costly. An unfortunate result of the unavailability of an efficient Fiqhi model applicable to modern multilateral and multi-counterparty contracts has been the fact that the present Islamic finance has been forced to replicate conventional risk-transfer (interest rate based) debt contracts thus drawing severe criticisms of duplicating conventional finance. In 2012, a gathering of some of the Muslim world's most prominent experts in Jurisprudence (Fuqaha) and economists issued the Kuala Lumpur Declaration (Fatwa) in which they identified risk sharing as the essence of Islamic finance. The Declaration opened the door for a new Fiqh approach to take the lead in developing the jurisprudence of multilateral and multi-counterparty transactions. This Declaration (Fatwa) provides a prime motivation to search for a comprehensive model of risk sharing that can serve as an archetypal contract encompassing all potential contemporary financial transactions. From the perspective of Islamic Jurisprudence (Fiqh), the technicalities of the concept of risk sharing in contemporary finance have yet to be defined in Islamic literature. This book attempts to clarify and shed light on these technicalities from the perspective of Fiqh. It is a comprehensive study that relies on the fundamental Islamic sources to establish a theoretical and practical perspective of Fiqh encompassing risk-sharing Islamic finance as envisioned in the Kuala Lumpur Declaration of 2012. This new paradigm should lead to a more efficient approach to multilateral and multi-counterparty Islamic contracts which, here-to-fore has been lacking in the current configuration of Islamic finance.

The Canonization of Islamic Law tells the story of the birth of classical Islamic law in the eighth and ninth centuries CE. It shows how an oral normative tradition embedded in communal practice was transformed into a systematic legal science defined by hermeneutic analysis of a clearly demarcated scriptural canon. This transformation was inaugurated by the innovative legal theory of Muhammad b. Idris al-Shafi'i (d. 820 CE), and it took place against the background of a crisis of identity and religious authority in ninth-century Egypt. By tracing the formulation, reception, interpretation and spread of al-Shafi'i's ideas, the author demonstrates how the canonization of scripture that lay at the heart of al-Shafi'i's theory formed the basis for the emergence of legal hermeneutics, the formation of the Sunni schools of law, and the creation of a shared methodological basis in Muslim thought.

For over a thousand years, Muslim scholars worked to ensure that Islamic law was always fresh and vibrant, that it responded to the needs of an evolving Muslim community and served as a moral and spiritual compass. They did this by "hacking" Islamic law in accordance with changing times and contexts, diving into the interconnected Islamic legal tradition to recalibrate what was outdated, making some laws work better and more efficiently while leaving others undisturbed. These hacking skills made Islamic law both flexible and relevant so that it could meet the needs of a community with changing values while remaining true to its ancient roots. Today, the hacking process has stalled in the face of unprecedented structural challenges, and Islamic law has stagnated. This book is designed to revitalize the hacking tradition by getting readers involved in the process. It walks them through the ins and outs of Islamic legal change, vividly describing how Muslim scholars have met new and evolving challenges on topics as diverse as abolition, democracy, finance, gender, human rights, sexuality, and more. And it provides step-by-step instructions for readers to hack laws for themselves, so that through their engagement and creativity, they can help Islamic law regain its intrinsic vitality and resume its role as a forward-looking source for good in the world.

"Islamic Commercial Law: An Analysis of Futures and Options" is a ground-breaking study, written by a renowned scholar in the field of Islamic law, Prof M. H. Kamali, focusing on options and futures as trading tools, exploring their validity from an Islamic point of view. In this work, Prof M. H. Kamali advances a new perspective on the issue of futures and options based on an interpretation of the Qur'an and the Sunna and referring to the principle of "maslaha" (consideration of public interest) as enshrined in the Sharia.---"Islamic Commercial Law" consists of three parts. Part One is devoted to the description of futures trading and the understanding of operational procedures of futures and futures markets. Part Two investigates the issue of permissibility of futures trading in Islamic law and the underlying questions of risk-taking and speculation, which are of central concern to the topic. Part Three is devoted to an analysis of options. Prof M. H. Kamali concludes this work by providing the most advisable approach to commercial speculation in futures and options, especially the one that most serves the public interest as enshrined in Sharia. So as to aid the reader's understanding of this topic, the author also includes a helpful glossary of all technical Arabic terms that appear in this work. Prof M. H. Kamali's "Islamic Commercial Law" is recommended reading for anyone working on Islamic law, comparative law, or Islamic banking, and is an essential contribution to the topic of Islamic commercial law.

The sharia is a set of traditional laws that define a Muslim's obligations to God and his fellow human beings. Westerners often misunderstand the nature of the sharia, born as it is of a complicated legal and academic tradition that may not always seem relevant to today's world. Written for those unfamiliar with Islam, this volume provides an accurate and objective assessment of the sharia's achievements, shortcomings and future prospects. It explores the fundamentals of Islam and traditional sharia laws. In addition, the sharia is discussed with respect to Ottoman law, puritanism and jihad. The sharia's relevance to today's world events is also explored. Appendices provide Al-Shafi'i's views on legal knowledge; Ibn Hanbal's discourse on marriage and divorce; a Western translation of the concept of jihad; and an analysis of the sharia in twenty-nine selected countries.

I.B.Tauris in association with the Institute of Ismaili Studies Sharia has been a source of misunderstanding and misconception in both the Muslim and non-Muslim worlds. Understanding Sharia: Islamic Law in a Globalised World sets out to explore the reality of sharia, contextualising its development in the early centuries of Islam and showing how it evolved in line with historical and social circumstances. The authors, Raficq S. Abdulla and Mohamed M. Keshavjee, both British-trained lawyers, argue that sharia and the positive law flowing from it, known as fiqh, have never been an exclusive legal system or a fixed set of beliefs. In addition to tracing the history of sharia, the book offers a critique concerning its status today. Sharia is examined with regard to particular issues that are of paramount importance in the contemporary world, such as human rights; criminal penalties, including those dealing with apostasy, blasphemy and adultery, commercial transactions, and bio-medical ethics, amongst other subjects. The authors show that sharia is a legal system underpinned by ethical principles that are open to change in different circumstances and contexts, notwithstanding the claims for `transcendental permanence' made by Islamists. This book encourages new thinking about the history of sharia and its role in the modern world.

Jurisdictional Exceptionalisms examines the legal issues associated with a parent's forced removal of their children to reside in another country following relationship dissolution or divorce. Through an analysis of Public and Private International Laws, and Islamic law - historical and as implemented in contemporary Muslim Family Law States - the authors uncover distinct legal lexicons that centre children's interests in premodern Islamic legal doctrines, modern State practice, and multilateral conventions on children. While legal advocates and policy makers pursue global solutions to parental child abduction, this volume identifies fundamental obstacles, including the absence of shared understandings of jurisdiction. By examining the relevant law and practice, the study exposes the polarised politics embedded in the technical legal rules on jurisdiction. Presenting a new, innovative method in comparative legal history, the book examines the beliefs, values, histories, doctrines, institutions and practices of legal systems presumed to be in conflict with one another.

The study of Islamic law can be a forbidding prospect for those entering the field for the first time. Wael Hallaq, a leading scholar and practitioner of Islamic law, guides students through the intricacies of the subject in this absorbing introduction. The first half of the book is devoted to a discussion of Islamic law in its pre-modern natural habitat. The second part explains how the law was transformed and ultimately dismantled during the colonial period. In the final chapters, the author charts recent developments and the struggles of the Islamists to negotiate changes which have seen the law emerge as a primarily textual entity focused on fixed punishments and ritual requirements. The book, which includes a chronology, a glossary of key terms, and lists of further reading, will be the first stop for those who wish to understand the fundamentals of Islamic law, its practices and history.

Arabic and Persian Manuscripts in the Birnbaum Collection, Toronto includes many early copies, from the 6th century A.H. / 12th century C.E. onwards. They cover a wide range of subjects. The catalogue gives detailed descriptions of 66 Arabic and 34 Persian works, arranged by subject. Author and title indexes provide easy access, and photographs of selected pages enhance the descriptions. The manuscripts were acquired individually over many decades.

Imam Nawawi's commentary on Sahih Muslim is one of the most highly regarded works in Islamic thought and literature. Accepted by every sunni school of thought, and foundational in the Shaafi school, this text, available for the first time in English, is famed throughout the Muslim world. After the Qur'an, the prophetic traditions are the most recognised source of wisdom in Islam. Amongst the collected Hadith, Sahih Muslim is second only to the the collection of Imam Bukhari. With a commentary by Imam Nawawi, whose other works are amongst the most widely-read books on Islam, and translated by Adil Salahi, a modern scholar of great acclaim, this immense work, finally available to English readers, is an essential addition to every Muslim library, and for anybody with an interest in Islamic thought.

This handbook is a detailed reference source comprising original articles covering the origins, history, theory and practice of Islamic law. The handbook starts out by dealing with the question of what type of law is Islamic law and includes a critical analysis of the pedagogical approaches to studying and analysing Islamic law as a discipline. The handbook covers a broad range of issues, including the role of ethics in Islamic jurisprudence, the mechanics and processes of interpretation, the purposes and objectives of Islamic law, constitutional law and secularism, gender, bioethics, Muslim minorities in the West, jihad and terrorism. Previous publications on this topic have approached Islamic law from a variety of disciplinary and pedagogical perspectives. One of the original features of this handbook is that it treats Islamic law as a legal discipline by taking into account the historical functions and processes of legal cultures and the patterns of legal thought. With contributions from a selection of highly regarded and leading scholars in this field, the Routledge Handbook of Islamic Law is an essential resource for students and scholars who are interested in the field of Islamic Law.

One of the characteristics of the 'conservative religious revival' movements in Judaism, Christianity and Islam is the commitment to a scriptural text as the sole source of knowledge, and an insistence on the literal interpretation of this text. However little has been to done to investigate this phenomenon of interpretation which proposes the literal meaning as the only acceptable one. This book fills this gap with respect to Islam, looking both at literal meaning and literalism. The focus is on the tradition of Muslim legal writings: in this literature there exists a complex procedure of how to identify the literal meaning and the role it has in interpreting texts. The author also makes reference to Quranic exegesis (tafsir) and Arabic rhetorical works, since many of the ideas of legal hermeneutics were derived from these cognate traditions of learning. The overall aim is to take an important modern phenomenon (Muslim commitment to the literal meaning of the revelatory texts) and place it in an historical context. The Muslim debates analysed in the book are described through the prism of modern Western linguistic philosophy, and a chronology of the development of Muslim conceptions of literal meaning structures the book.

Dispute Resolution in Islamic Finance addresses how best to handle disputes within Islamic finance. It examines how they can be resolved in a less confrontational manner and ensure such disagreements are settled in a just and fair way. There has been little focus on how disputes within Islamic finance are resolved. As a result, many of these disputes are resolved through litigation, notwithstanding that the various jurisdictions and court systems are generally poorly equipped to handle such matters. This book addresses this gap in our knowledge by focusing on five centres of Islamic finance: the United Kingdom, the United States of America, Malaysia, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Before exploring these countries in detail, the book considers the issues of the choice of law within Islamic finance as well the prevailing forms of dispute resolution in this form of finance. The book brings together a group of leading scholars who are all specialists on the subject in the countries they examine. It is a key resource for students and researchers of Islamic finance, and aimed at lawyers, finance professionals, industry practitioners, consultancy firms, and academics.