Shariah is by now a term that most Americans and Europeans recognize, though few really understand what it means. Often portrayed as a medieval system used by religious zealots to oppress women and deny human rights, conservative politicians, media commentators, and hardline televangelists stoke fear by promoting the idea that Muslims want to impose a repressive Shariah rule in America and Europe. Despite the breadth of this propaganda, a majority of Muslims-men and women-support Shariah as a source of law. In fact, for many centuries Shariah has functioned for Muslims as a positive source of guidance, providing a moral compass for individuals and society. This critical new book by John L. Esposito and Natana Delong-Bas aims to serve as a guide for what everybody needs to know in the conversation about Shariah, responding to misunderstandings and distortions, and offering answers to questions about the origin, nature, and content of Shariah.

The contrast between religion and law has been continuous throughout Muslim history. Islamic law has always existed in a tension between these two forces: God, who gave the law, and the state--the sultan--representing society and implementing the law. This tension and dynamic have created a very particular history for the law--in how it was formulated and by whom, in its theoretical basis and its actual rules, and in how it was practiced in historical reality from the time of its formation until today. That is the main theme of this book.
Knut S. Vikor introduces the development and practice of Islamic law to a wide readership: students, lawyers, and the growing number of those interested in Islamic civilization. He summarizes the main concepts of Islamic jurisprudence; discusses debates concerning the historicity of Islamic sources of dogma and the dating of early Islamic law; describes the classic practice of the law, in the formulation and elaboration of legal rules and practice in the courts; and sets out various substantive legal rules, on such vital matters as the family and economic activity.

This book looks at Tabaqat al-fuqaha' al-shafi'iyah by Ibn Qadi Shuhbah (d. 851/1448) and how its author attempted to portray the development of the Shafi'i school of law up to his own times. The volume examines the impact of crises on the formation of the tabaqat genre. It demonstrates how tabaqat, dedicated to explicating religious authority, were used by authors to sort-out challenges to intellectual orthodoxies. It also examines in detail the Tabaqat directly, demonstrating Ibn Qadi Shuhbah's depiction of the development of Shafi'i law, the formation of intellectual sub-schools within the madhhab, the causes of legal decline, and curatives for the decline that are to be found in the great Shafi'i Ikhtilaf (divergent opinion) texts: the 'Aziz sharh al-wajiz by al-Rafi'i and the Rawdat al-talibin by al-Nawawi.

Used widely by Shi'ite seminaries, and valued by Sunni scholars for its intellectual rigor, Muhammad Baqir as-Sadr's Lessons is a key study of Islamic jurisprudence. It covers topics from the general characterization of jurisprudence to such specialized issues as the assessment of the verbal divine-law argument, study of procedural principles, and reflections on the resolution of conflicting arguments. The new translation by Roy Mottahedeh from the original Arabic employs a carefully designed and appropriate English terminology, and features a significant amount of supporting material including a glossary of legal and theological concepts , and a full index of Arabic terms.

This survey of Islamic law combines Western and Islamic views and describes the relationship between the original theories of Islamic law and the views of contemporary Islamic writers. Covering the key topics in the area, including the history, sources and formation of Islamic law, the legal mechanisms, and the contemporary context, it is strong in its coverage of the modern perspective, which distinguishes this book from other texts in the field. The aim is to provide the student with a basic understanding of Islamic law and access to the complexity of the Islamic legal system. The language used is non-technical and understanding is aided with a supplementary detailed glossary and analytical indices.

Triple talaq, or talaq-e-bidat, is one of the most debated issues not only in India but also in other countries having a sizeable Muslim population. Muslim men have regularly misused this provision to divorce their wives instantly by simply uttering 'talaq' thrice. The Supreme Court of India, in the landmark judgement Shayara Bano v. Union of India, finally declared the practice unconstitutional. Salman Khurshid, who assisted in the case as amicus curiae, dives deep into the topic but presents it simply, without much jargon. Explaining the reasons behind the court's decision, he goes on to discuss other aspects of this practice, such as why it is wrong; why this practice has thrived; what the previous judicial pronouncements on it were; what the Quran and Muslim religious leaders say about it; and what the comparative practices in other countries are. This is the Hindi translation of the English edition.

In January 2003, RAND called together a group of renowned experts with knowledge in the fields of Islamic law, constitution writing, and democracy, and with specific country and regional expertise. Keeping in mind the realities of Afghanistan's current situation and drawing from the experiences of other countries, the group identified practical ideas, particularly about the treatment of Islam in the constitution, for those involved in the drafting of Afghanistan's new constitution.

This work was written 1989 and published for the first time in 2002. The author's intention is to inform even-handedly, national and international debates about the misunderstandings surrounding the Sharia and common legal systems in Nigeria. Balewa broadly discusses Western and Islamic philosophical backgrounds of law, relationships between law, politics and religion in society, and concepts of secularism and secularity. He traces the history and schools of Sharia law, and the sources of common law in Nigeria, and its comparative religious and colonial foundations. He further appraises two views of the controversy: namely, whether Sharia law, as a fully-fledged legal system, should be reflected in the Nigerian constitution - or not, given its contentious religious content; and he states the case against Sharia. His conclusion is that in view of the status quo, and the multi-ethnic, mulit-religious nature of Nigerian society, there is a need for understanding of the truths of both systems; and to find appropriate means of ensuring their equality and peaceful co-existence.

In "The Islamic Conception of Justice," Majid Khadduri, one of the world's preeminent authorities on Islamic justice and jurisprudence, presents his extensive study and reflection on Islamic political, legal, ethical, and social philosophy. This book is both a magisterial historical synthesis and an illumination of the beliefs and practices of modern Islam. Throughout, Khadduri discusses not only the meaning of justice in general but also how justice has undergone significant changes in the modern age. The final chapter deals with the impact of Western notions of justice, with especial emphasis on the recurrence of fundamentalist movements such as the Islamic Revolution in Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Pakistan, and other Islamic lands.

Are the WTO Agreements and dispute settlement procedures consistent with Islamic (Shari'a) law principles and norms of justice? How can a foreign investor in a Muslim country comply with the financial tenets of Shari'a? Will Arab and Islamic countries continue to lag behind much of the world in e-commerce, or can e-commerce be integrated with traditional business methods as an engine of economic growth? Experts from the Middle East, Europe and North America examine these and other issues from their unique perspectives in this fourth volume in The Permanent Court of Arbitration/Peace Palace Papers series, which reproduces the work of the Fourth International Law Seminar held at the Peace Palace on October 12, 2001. The seminar, organized jointly by the Permanent Court of Arbitration and the Arab Union of International Arbitration, focused on strengthening relations with Arab and Islamic countries in three specific areas: electronic commerce, the World Trade Organization's dispute settlement mechanisms and foreign investment. In the papers presented here, the authors point out that not only is free and liberal trade deeply rooted in the culture of Islam, but that Shari'a urges the accommodation of all kinds of knowledge including the technological environment necessary for e-commerce. They point the way to full participation by Arab and lslamic countries in the word economic community. This volume also features a French language summary of the papers.

"The Concise Encyclopedia of Islam" is a mandatory reference tool that will prove to be indispensable for students of all subjects which concern, or touch on, the religion and law of Islam. It includes all the articles contained in the first edition and supplement of the "Encyclopedia of Islam" which are particularly related to the religion and law of Islam. This volume has a vast geographical and historical scope which includes the old Arabo-Islamic Empire, the Islamic states of Iran, Central Asia, the Indian sub-continent and Indonesia, the Ottoman Empire and the various Muslim states and communities in Africa, Europe, and the former U.S.S.R. "The Concise Encyclopedia of Islam" contains an extensive index and bibliography. This publication has also been published in hardback, please click here for details.

Drawing on both religious and secular sources, this challenging book argues that divinely ordained law is frequently misinterpreted by Muslim authorities at the expense of certain groups, including women. Khaled Abou El Fadl cites a series of injustices in Islamic society and ultimately proposes a return to the original ethics at the heart of the Muslim legal system.

An exploration of family law as it pertains to women with regard to marriage, divorce and inheritance in the Middle East. This second edition is revised to expand and update coverage of family law reforms that have taken place throughout the Middle East, North Africa, and South and Southeast Asia. It focuses on the historical and legal context for reform, and the methodology and extent of contemporary legal trends, particularly in Egypt and Pakistan.

Legal issues of personal status including those implicating women's rights continue to be a focal area of shari'a judicial practice in the Muslim world. Changing ideas of marriage, relations between the spouses, divorce, and the rights of divorcees and widows challenge the courts around the Arab world. In this context, the areas that came under the Palestinian Authority in 1994 command particular attention: the particular political and socio-economic circumstances that surround Palestine's progress toward full statehood have created a remarkable crucible for the synthesis of a new family law in the Arab world.
This rigorous study of the interpretation and application of personal status law in the Palestinian West Bank (and to a lesser extent in the Gaza Strip) is the most extensive yet attempted. It presents a systematic analysis of the application of Islamic family law in nearly 10,000 marriage contracts, 1000 deeds of talaq (unilateral divorce) or khul' (divorce with renunciation), and 2000 judicial rulings over a time span that includes Jordanian rule and Israeli military occupation, updating this with material from the beginning of the jurisdiction of the Palestinian Authority. Taken into account are the sources of law used in the shari'a courts of the West Bank: the successive codes of family law (the Jordanian Law of Personal Status 1976 and its predecessor the Jordanian Law of Family Rights 1951), and traditional Hanafi rules and texts, along with commentaries by prominent contemporary shari'a scholars and Appeal Court decisions as well as the amendments and modifications being sought by civil society actors (notably women's groups) in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, as well asin Jordan.

Whilst other works exist which examine the Islamic law of personal status, this is the first to set out in a single volume the laws relating to marriage and divorce in the Arab states, both codified and uncodified, in a manner which will enable the reader to look up the provisions of the law in specific areas and, where required, to compare the positions of the laws of different countries.

Although often neglected in the literature on Islamic law, contemporary Indonesia is an especially rich source of insight into the diverse understandings and uses of the Islamic legal tradition in the modern world. Indonesian Muslims are engaged in vibrant and far-reaching debates over the terms, relevance, and developmental limits of Islamic law, and Indonesia is home to a variety of dynamic state and non-state institutional structures for the generation and application of Islamic doctrine. The essays in this volume provide focused examinations of the internal dynamics of intellectual and institutional elements of Islamic law in modern Indonesia in its recent formations. The first five chapters address issues relating to Islamic legal theory, both its historical development over the past century and analysis of the work of specific groups of contemporary scholars, jurists, and activists. The final seven chapters contain studies of more concrete manifestations of Islamic law in modern Indonesia, including court systems, positive law, the drafting of new "Islamic" legislation, and contemporary debates over the implementation of the Shari'a. Taken together these essays offer a series of substantive introductions to important developments in both the theory and practice of law in the world's most populous Muslim society.

A formidable array of judicial talent considers all aspects of Islamic criminal procedure with the firm emphasis on its practical application today in modern states. Where do Islamic courts operate in the modern world? What training does an Islamic judge receive? How does an Islamic court deal with a criminal case? What proof and evidence does it accept? What law and practice do the Islamic judges apply to transgressions by Westerners in Saudi Arabia, whether they be accused of murder, adultery or drinking alcohol? This book attempts to answer all these and many more crucial questions of Islamic law as they affect the different nations of the Islamic World.

Rights and Civilizations, translated from the Italian original, traces a history of international law to illustrate the origins of the Western colonial project and its attempts to civilize the non-European world. The book, ranging from the sixteenth century to the twenty-first, explains how the West sought to justify its own colonial conquests through an ideology that revolved around the idea of its own assumed superiority, variously attributed to Christian peoples (in the early modern age), Western 'civil' peoples (in the nineteenth century), and 'developed' peoples (at the beginning of the twentieth century), and now to democratic Western peoples. In outlining this history and discourse, the book shows that, while the Western conception may style itself as universal, it is in fact relative. This comes out by bringing the Western civilization into comparison with others, mainly the Islamic one, suggesting the need for an 'intercivilizational' approach to international law.

The medieval theory of the caliphate, epitomized by the Abbasids (750-1258), was the construct of jurists who conceived it as a contractual leadership of the Muslim community in succession to the Prophet Muhammed's political authority. In this book, Huseyin Yilmaz traces how a new conception of the caliphate emerged under the Ottomans, who redefined the caliph as at once a ruler, a spiritual guide, and a lawmaker corresponding to the prophet's three natures. Challenging conventional narratives that portray the Ottoman caliphate as a fading relic of medieval Islamic law, Yilmaz offers a novel interpretation of authority, sovereignty, and imperial ideology by examining how Ottoman political discourse led to the mystification of Muslim political ideals and redefined the caliphate. He illuminates how Ottoman Sufis reimagined the caliphate as a manifestation and extension of cosmic divine governance. The Ottoman Empire arose in Western Anatolia and the Balkans, where charismatic Sufi leaders were perceived to be God's deputies on earth. Yilmaz traces how Ottoman rulers, in alliance with an increasingly powerful Sufi establishment, continuously refashioned and legitimated their rule through mystical imageries of authority, and how the caliphate itself reemerged as a moral paradigm that shaped early modern Muslim empires. A masterful work of scholarship, Caliphate Redefined is the first comprehensive study of premodern Ottoman political thought to offer an extensive analysis of a wealth of previously unstudied texts in Arabic, Persian, and Ottoman Turkish.

This book is important because it is: Unique. Heaven on Earth offers a critique of extremism that is human rights-based and entertaining - combining the comparative approach of Karen Armstrong and the immediacy of Ed Husain (The Islamist) with storytelling. Timely. At a time of veil bans, Qur'an burnings and English Defence League protests, Kadri voices a liberal view of Islamic history and shows Muslims working against repression. This book explains up-to-the-minute brutalities. Epic. Interviews, anecdotes, personal reflection and analysis are set against a narrative that sweeps from seventh-century Mecca to the war in Afghanistan. Civilisations are evoked via the vivid lives of caliphs, mystics, and travellers. Legal changes are described through the feuds, courtroom dramas, conquests and cataclysms that have left their mark on modern Islamic law. First-hand. On the road for five months, Kadri travelled through Iran just before the June 2009 election protests, and took part in a human rights conference there with ayatollahs and academics. Eye-opening. This book goes beyond the explosive headline issues (criminal justice, women, jihad, religious freedom) to reveal the stranger ones: genie exorcisms; the legal consequences of premature ejaculation; online fatwa advice; the sharia approach to Facebook and Qur'anic mobile phone ringtones, etc. Bold. Heaven on Earth primarily targets religious extremism, but also cuts anti-Muslim panic down to size.