Essay from the year 2004 in the subject Orientalism / Sinology - Islamic Studies, grade: 75%, Middlesex University in London (School of Oriental and African Studies), course: Islamic Law, 18 Literaturquellen entries in the bibliography, language: English, comment: The history of the sharia, or Islamic law, has been one of permanent changes and challenges. It has been constantly subjected to influences from its social environment. Also today, in the current globalizing context, the question arises as to how Muslims can react to these structural changes, and how the sharia can be adapted to the new social reality. This paper discusses as to whether individuals are entitled to interpret the Quran and the Hadith., abstract: "Each individual has direct access to the Quran and hadith and is in principle entitled to engage in ijtihad, so long as she has the requisite knowledge. Thus not only countries, but also individuals are entitled to their own jurisprudential choices." (al-Hibri in Muslim Womens Rights in the Global Village). This paper discusses al-Hibris statement on the position in Islamic law today.

In Coercion and Responsibility in Islam, Mairaj Syed explores how classical Muslim theologians and jurists from four intellectual traditions argue about the thorny issues that coercion raises about responsibility for one's action. This is done by assessing four ethical problems: whether the absence of coercion or compulsion is a condition for moral agency; how the law ought to define what is coercive; coercion's effect on the legal validity of speech acts; and its effects on moral and legal responsibility in the cases of rape and murder. Through a comparative and historical examination of these ethical problems, the book demonstrates the usefulness of a new model for analyzing ethical thought produced by intellectuals working within traditions in a competitive pluralistic environment. The book compares classical Muslim thought on coercion with that of modern Western thinkers on these issues and finds significant parallels between them. The finding suggests that a fruitful starting point for comparative ethical inquiry, especially inquiry aimed at the discovery of common ground for ethical action, may be found in an examination of how ethicists from different traditions considered concrete problems.

Foundations of Jurisprudence: An Introduction to Imami Shi'i Legal Theory is a critical edition of the Arabic text with a parallel English translation of Mabadi' al-wusul ila 'ilm al-usul by al-'Allamah al-Hilli, introduced, edited and translated by Sayyid Amjad H. Shah Naqavi. Al-'Allamah al-Hilli participated in the leading debates of his day and applied his vast erudition in philosophy, logic, and theology to the paramount subject of jurisprudence. This text presents an exemplar of the rich revival of Shi'i scholarship in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries of the Common Era. Concise, yet comprehensive, this work sets the standard for the subsequent development and discussion of Imami Shi'i legal theory, such that its influence can be traced through to modern times. This dual-text edition is indispensable for students and scholars of Imami Shi'i jurisprudence.

This book examines the relationship between the state state implementation of Shari'a and diverse lived realities of everyday Islam in contemporary Aceh, Indonesia. With chapters covering topics ranging from NGOs and diaspora politics to female ulama and punk rockers, the volume opens new perspectives on the complexity of Muslim discourse and practice in a society that has experienced tremendous changes since the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. These detailed accounts of and critical reflections on how different groups in Acehnese society negotiate their experiences and understandings of Islam highlight the complexity of the ways in which the state is both a formative and a limited force with regard to religious and social transformation. Contributors are: Dina Afrianty, R. Michael Feener, Kristina Gro mann, Reza Idria, David Kloos, Antje Missbach, Benjamin Otto, Jan-Michiel Otto, Annemarie Samuels and Eka Srimulyani.

This book provides a detailed analysis of Islamic juristic writings on the topic of rape and argues that classical Islamic jurisprudence contained nuanced, substantially divergent doctrines of sexual violation as a punishable crime. The work centers on legal discourses of the first six centuries of Islam, the period during which these discourses reached their classical forms, and chronicles the juristic conflict over whether or not to provide monetary compensation to victims. Along with tracing the emergence and development of this conflict over time, Hina Azam explains evidentiary ramifications of each of the two competing positions, which are examined through debates between the H anafi and Ma liki schools of law. This study examines several critical themes in Islamic law, such as the relationship between sexuality and property, the tension between divine rights and personal rights in sex crimes, and justifications of victim's rights afforded by the two competing doctrines.