There is a long and rich history of opinion centred on female prayer leadership in Islam that has occupied the minds of theologians and jurists alike. It includes outright prohibition, dislike, permissibility under certain conditions and, although rarely, unrestricted sanction, or even endorsement. This book discusses debates drawn from scholars of the formative period of Islam who engaged with the issue of female prayer leadership. Simonetta Calderini critically analyses their arguments, puts them into their historical context, and, for the first time, tracks down how they have informed current views on female imama (prayer leadership). In presenting the variety of opinions discussed in the past by Sunni and Shi'i scholars, and some of the Sufis among them, the book uncovers how they are, at present, being used selectively, depending on modern agendas and biases. It also reviews the roles and types of authority of current women imams in diverse contexts spanning from Asia, Africa and Europe to America. The research offers readers the opportunity to gain nuanced answers to the question of female imama today that may lead to informed discussions and to change, if not necessarily in practices then at the very least in attitudes. This ground-breaking book interrogates the cases of women who are reported to have led prayer in the past. It then analyses the voices of current women imams, many of whom engage with those women of the past to validate their own roles in the present and so pave the way for the future.

Introducing undergraduate students to Islamic law, this accessible textbook does not presume legal or technical knowledge. Drawing on a comparative approach, it encourages students to think through the issues of the application of Islamic law where Muslims live as a majority and where they live as a minority, including the USA, Saudia Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan. The book surveys the historical development as well as the contemporary contexts of Islamic law. In distilling the history of Islamic law for non-specialists, the author covers important topics such as the development and transformation of Islamic institutions before and after colonialism. Coverage of Islamic law across contemporary contexts draws on real case material, and allows for discussion of Islam as a legal and a moral code that is activated both inside and outside the court. Readers will learn about rituals, dietary restrictions, family, contracts and property, lawful and unlawful gain, criminal law and punishments, and what makes a government legitimate in the eyes of Muslim individuals and authorities.

This title examines the usefulness, challenges and limits of ijtihad for Muslims today. The resurgence of Islam, geopolitical crises involving Muslim nations, violence associated with Islam and the immigration of millions of Muslims to Western countries have generated a strong interest in understanding Islamic law. The challenges of these new realities have impressed upon Muslims the need to rethink classical jurisprudence and a powerful contemporary ijtihad - the process of making a legal decision by independent interpretation of the legal sources. This book explores the limits and controversies of this development in the context of the diverse needs of Muslim cultures and communities living in Muslim and non-Muslim nations and continents including Europe and North America. This title explains diverse bodies of Islamic law including fiqh, qanun and siyar. It supplements Arabic terms from the Basic Code with English substitutes. It analyses the forces shaping contemporary ijtihadPresents a jurisprudential guide suitable for jurists, judges, national legislatures, and teachers and students and law and Islamic studies.

200 abstracts of scholarly publications in non-English languages on Islamic law and ethics. Law within Muslim societies is not uniform; even within Muslim majority regions it can be interpreted differently according to different denominations and legal traditions. As law forms an integral part of normative social practice, reflecting the moral and ethical principles of a society, it is important to highlight the diversity of interpretations to better enable the study of law along with the ethical principles of a community. This volume brings together some of the many unheard voices of scholars studying law and ethics in languages other than English. It features 200 abstracts with bibliographical details in 3 languages (English, Arabic and Turkish) giving access to information about scholarly publications from Muslim contexts in the fields of law and Sharia.

At the time of his death in 1998, at the age of 47, Norman Calder had become the most widely-discussed scholar in his field. This was largely focused on his monograph, Studies in Early Muslim Jurisprudence (Oxford, 1993), which boldly challenged existing theories about the origins of Islamic Law. The present volume of twenty-one of his articles and book chapters represents the full richness and diversity of Calder's oeuvre, from his initial doctoral research on Shii Islam to his later more philosophical writings on Sunni hermeneutics, in addition to his numerous studies on early Islamic history and jurisprudence. Calder's pioneering research, which was based on a sensitive reading of medieval texts fully informed by contemporary critical theory, often challenged the established assumptions of the day. He is known in particular for urging a reassessment of widely-held prejudices which underestimated the degree of creativity in medieval Islamic scholarship. Many of the articles in this volume have already become classics for the fields of Muslim jurisprudence and hermeneutics.

First published in 1996. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The Shariah is one of the most misunderstood and maligned Islamic terms in the West. The word conjures up images of uncivilised Muslims whipping criminals, stoning adulterers and confining women within their homes in the minds of many people. Yet, Shariah literally means a way or a path and, more specifically, the way to a watering place. Far from being a strict penal code it is a humane, compassionate and benevolent system of laws that guides Muslims, based on the Qur'an, the Sunnah of the Prophet Muhammad, and the interpretation of religious scholars. This book is a simple and concise guide to the Shariah (Islamic law) to explain its meaning, scope and operation in practical life, as well as helping readers understand and appreciate its value and necessity in the believer's life.

This volume examines Islamic maritime law and the actual practice of Muslim sailors during the classical period. It contains seven chapters. The first surveys the important terminology of maritime life. The second chapter examines the interrelationship of shipowners, crew, and passengers. The third chapter deals with maritime commercial laws; contracts for the leasing of ships, freight charges, transportation of goods, taxes and tolls in the ports. It also examines losses at sea, describes the laws concerning of jettison and "general average," collision, and salvage of jetsam. Chapter four covers military maritime law; chapter five emphasizes the legal significance of territorial waters as interpreted by Muslim jurists, governors, and seafarers. The sixth chapter discusses how Islamic maritime law was adjudicated at sea, while the final one concludes the study by explaining how sea-travel affected the performance of Islamic religious duties.

This book explores the development of the Muslim Brotherhood's thinking on Islamic law and human rights, and argues that the Muslim Brotherhood has exacerbated, rather than solved, tensions between the two in Egypt. The organisation and its scholars have drawn on hard-line juristic opinions and reinvented certain concepts from Islamic traditions in ways that limit the scope of various human rights, and advocate for Islamic alternatives to international human rights. The Muslim Brotherhood's practices in opposition and in power have been consistent with its literature. As an opposition party, it embraced human rights language in its struggle against an authoritarian regime, but advocated for broad restrictions on certain rights. However, its recent and short-lived experience in power provides evidence of its inclination to reinforce restrictions on religious freedom, freedom of expression and association, and the rights of religious minorities, and to reverse previous reforms related to women's rights.The book concludes that the peaceful management of political and religious diversity in society cannot be realised under the Muslim Brotherhood's model of a Shari`a state. The study advocates for the drastic reformation of traditional Islamic law and state impartiality towards religion, as an alternative to the development of a Shari`a state or exclusionary secularism. This transformation is, however, contingent upon significant long-term political and socio-cultural change, and it is clear that successfully expanding human rights protection in Egypt requires not the exclusion of Islamists, but their transformation. Islamists still have a large constituency and they are not the only actors who are ambivalent about human rights. Meanwhile, Islamic law also appears to continue to influence Egypt's law. The book explores the prospects for certain constitutional and institutional measures to facilitate an evolutionary interpretation of Islamic law, provide a baseline of human rights and gradually integrate international human rights into Egyptian law.

Drawing on legal and hadith texts from the formative and classical periods of Islamic legal history, this book offers an overview of the development of the questions prominent jurists asked and answered about women's issues. All assumed a woman would marry and thus the book concentrates on women's family life. The introduction establishes the historical framework within which the jurists worked. A chapter on Qur'an verses devoted to women's lives is followed by chapters on marriage and divorce which compare the views of jurists during the formative period. The fourth chapter describes the evolution from the formative to the classical periods. The fifth uses material from both periods to describe the array of legal opinion about other aspects of women's lives in and outside their homes. Throughout, jurists' opinions are juxtaposed with relevant quotations from contemporaneous hadith collections.