‘Disinterested’ Scholarship, Arab Nationalism and the Study of Islamic Law in Britain

2018 ◽  
pp. 137-160
Author(s):  
Todd M. Thompson
Keyword(s):  
Islamic Law ◽  
Legal Reform ◽  
Legal Change ◽  
Commercial Arbitration ◽  
Arab Nationalism ◽  
European State ◽  
International Laws ◽  
Muslim Majority

This chapter provides an account of Norman Anderson’s views of Anglo-Arab relations amidst the decline of British imperial involvement in the region and analyses the debt his account of the development of legal reform owed to a diffusionist vision of the globalization of the ‘modern’ European state. It does so by providing an account of Anderson’s influence on the domestic laws of Libya and Tunisia and the international laws of commercial arbitration in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The chapter illustrates the parallels between Anderson and secular nationalist legal thinkers and politicians who advocated for legal change in Muslim majority countries during the period.

Islamic Legal Reform or Re-formation? The Transmutations of Critique in Rumee Ahmed’s Sharia Compliant: A User’s Guide to Hacking Islamic Law

2021 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 283-315
Author(s):  
Rami Koujah
Keyword(s):  
Reverse Engineering ◽  
Islamic Law ◽  
Legal Reform ◽  
Recent Book ◽  
Democratic Process ◽  
Legal Change ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Broad Audience ◽  
Islamic Jurisprudence

Abstract To say that the issue of Islamic legal reform is on the minds of most scholars and students (Muslim or otherwise) of Islamic law is hardly an exaggeration. But what does reform look like? Rumee Ahmed engages the issue in his recent book, Sharia Compliant: A User’s Guide to Hacking Islamic Law. Intended for a broad audience and aimed at catalyzing legal change from the bottom up, Sharia Compliant attempts to demystify Islamic jurisprudence and provide a blueprint for lawmaking, or “hacking” Islamic law, through reverse-engineering. In the process of his critique of Islamic law, Ahmed revises its history and method. This review argues that in lieu of reform, Ahmed argues for re-forming Islamic law. The hyphen is meant to indicate that Ahmed’s proposal amounts to a transmutation of fiqh and uṣūl al-fiqh: Islamic law is not interpreted, but arbitrarily willed; its sources (the Qur’an and Sunna), ornaments of this will, are instrumentalized to serve any desired end. In the end, Ahmed’s re-formed system undermines his hope for a democratic process of lawmaking.

Malaysia: Religious Pluralism and the Constitution in a Contested Polity

2012 ◽  
Vol 4 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 356-385 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Harding
Keyword(s):  
Islamic Law ◽  
Religious Conversion ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Islamic State ◽  
Colonial Era ◽  
Federal Constitution ◽  
Highly Sensitive ◽  
Plural Society ◽  
Muslim Majority ◽  
Historical Developments

Malaysia has a classically plural society with a Malay/ Muslim majority and a legal system which, for historical reasons, is bifurcated between the common law and Islamic law. It also has a colonial-era federal constitution under which Islam is a state issue. Disputes concerning religion are both many and divisive. They are dealt with mainly in constitutional terms, especially in debates about the notion of an Islamic state, in light of Article 3 and the enshrinement of an official religion and in litigation. The latter is rendered complex by the separation of Islamic from common law jurisdiction in 1988, a fact that has given rise to highly sensitive and troubling litigation involving, especially, religious conversion in Lina Joy (2007). This article traces historical developments relating to religion and the law, and finds cause for some optimism that religious divides can be bridged by constitutional means, in light of recent judicial responses and evolving debates about the constitutional position of Islam.

The Other Muslim Bans

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 2-38
Author(s):  
Will Smiley
Keyword(s):  
Security Policy ◽  
Islamic Law ◽  
State Level ◽  
The State ◽  
The Other ◽  
State Court ◽  
Court Cases ◽  
State Laws ◽  
Foreign Law ◽  
Muslim Majority

This Article addresses and critiques the case for state-level legislative bans on courts citing “Islamic law” or the law of Muslim-majority countries. In particular, the Article reviews the most substantive evidence adduced by the bans’ supporters, in the form of a set of state court cases published by the Center for Security Policy (CSP). Very few of these cases, in fact, show courts actually applying Islamic or foreign law, and in none of these cases would the various forms of proposed legislation have been likely to alter the result. Thus even this report does not suggest a need for the state laws purporting to ban sharīʿa. The Article thus argues that even if these bans are not unconstitutionally discriminatory in their effect, they are ineffective at achieving their claimed purpose. This Article was originally published as an Occasional Paper in the Harvard Papers in Islamic Law series in 2018.

Islamic Constitutions and Democracy

2021 ◽  
pp. 106591292199124
Author(s):  
Moamen Gouda ◽  
Shimaa Hanafy
Keyword(s):  
Islamic Law ◽  
Muslim Population ◽  
Informal Institution ◽  
Additional Control ◽  
Negative Effect ◽  
Alternative Measures ◽  
Resource Wealth ◽  
Muslim Majority ◽  
Natural Resource Wealth ◽  
The Relationship

There is an ongoing debate on the relationship between Islam and (lack of) democracy. Considerable literature shows that Islam, represented as an informal institution by Muslim population share, has a negative effect on democracy. This study examines the effects of formal institutions, specifically constitutions that prescribe Islamic law ( Shari’a) as a source of legislation, on democracy. We use a newly developed coding of the degree to which Islam is incorporated in constitutions. Our empirical results show that the constitutional entrenchment of Islamic law has a negative and significant effect on democracy. Our findings are robust to using different estimators and instrumental variable regressions, employing alternative measures of democracy and controlling for Muslim population, natural resource wealth, and additional control variables. While we show that Islamic constitutionalism is a reason for a democracy deficit in Muslim-majority countries, we find no evidence that Islam is inimical to democracy when not entrenched in the constitution.

scholarly journals A Novelty of Perspective of Fikih and PP No. 17 1965 for Status of Ownership of Life Insurance in Claims Fund

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 193
Author(s):  
Fuji Rahmadi ◽  
Amiur Nuruddin ◽  
Nawir Yuslem
Keyword(s):  
Life Insurance ◽  
Constitutional Law ◽  
Islamic Law ◽  
Social Phenomenon ◽  
Normative Approach ◽  
Muslim Majority

Islam considers insurance or “insured” as a social phenomenon that was ormed by helping each other and humanity. Treasure gained after the death of a person as a result of a cause that by its nature will bring profit, which is done in the period he was still alive then the property as it was by Ibn Hajar al-Haytami, an expert from the Shafi'ites fiqh, in his book Tuhfatul-Muhtaj Syarah Kitab al-Minhaj (by Imam al-Nawawi), fall into the category tirkah treasure. Although the normative existence of insurance is a necessity in the communities in Indonesia but considering Indonesia as a Muslim majority country, then its existence cannot be released by the paradigm of the dynamics of the system of Islamic law. Therefore in this paper describes some of the approaches used in assessing the existence of insurance in Indonesia, it is not enough just to use the normative approach to Islam, but must be coupled with a conventional legal approach that is shaded by the science of law, especially constitutional law.

scholarly journals Pembaruan Maslaḥah dalam Maqāṣid Al- Sharī‘ah: Telaah Humanistis tentang Al-Kulliyyāt Al-Khamsah

ULUMUNA ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 103-124
Author(s):  
Zaenuddin Mansyur
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Human Resources ◽  
Islamic Law ◽  
Legal Reform ◽  
Social Solidarity ◽  
Freedom Of Religion ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Human Rights Abuses ◽  
Social Disintegration ◽  
The Family

In order to answer a variety of issues faced by human being in the current era, such as human rights abuses, social disintegration, and terrorism, the renewal of Islamic law in the level of theoretical and practical aspects is very urgent. This paper aims to examine one of the Islamic legal reform efforts, namely to build a more technical understanding of the concept of maṣlaḥah contained in the maqāṣīd sharī‘ah, called the al-kulliyat al-khamsah. Therefore, the concept of maṣlaḥah in ḥifẓ al-dīn is technically defined as al-ḥurriyah al-i‘tiqād (freedom of religion and schools); in ḥifẓ al-nafs as al-karamat al-insān (human being breeding); in ḥifẓ al-nasl as ḥifẓ al-usrah (wholeness and harmony of the family); in ḥifẓ al-māl as al-taḍammun al-insān (social solidarity ), and in ḥifẓ al-‘aql as al-ḥuqūq as al-tarbiyāt (increasing human resources quality).

scholarly journals CHOICE OF ISLAMIC LAW AS THE GOVERNING LAW IN ISLAMIC FINANCE CONTRACTS: THE UNITED KINGDOM AND NIGERIAN PERSPECTIVES

2017 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kareem Adebayo Olatoye ◽  
Abubakri Yekini
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
Islamic Law ◽  
Islamic Finance ◽  
Unique Problem ◽  
Party Autonomy ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Muslim Majority ◽  
The Law ◽  
Governing Law

The globalisation of Islamic finance has brought the adjudication of Islamic finance disputes before non-Muslim courts and arbitral tribunals in Europe, America and elsewhere. Expectedly, the issue of the validity of the selecting Islamic law as the governing law of an Islamic finance contract often arises before these courts and tribunals. The article seeks to address the attitude of the United Kingdom and Nigerian courts to this unique problem. The thesis of the paper is that while the parties’ reasonable expectations in having their Islamic finance contracts governed by the Shari’ah may be met in Nigeria and by extension in other Muslim-majority countries, the contrary is the case in the United Kingdom and Europe where the courts do not generally favour the application of Islamic law. The paper advocates that the doctrine of the proper law of contract should be extended to Islamic finance by upholding Islamic law as the law selected by the parties (on the basis of party autonomy) or alternatively, as the system of law with which an Islamic finance transaction is most closely connected.

7. Penal law

2021 ◽  
pp. 102-114
Author(s):  
Mashood A. Baderin
Keyword(s):  
Islamic Law ◽  
Penal Law ◽  
Heated Debate ◽  
Penal Codes ◽  
Muslim Majority ◽  
Controversial Aspect

‘Penal law’ reviews Islamic penal law, the most controversial aspect of Islamic law that often prompts heated debate about its applicability in contemporary times. Classical Islamic law classifies crimes and their punishments into three main categories: hudūd, qisās, and ta’zīr. Substantively, the hudūd and qisās offences are specifically prescribed in the Qur’an and/or the Sunnah, while the ta’zīr offences are left to the discretion of the ruling authority or judges. There are a number of evidential requirements and standard of proving criminal offences under Islamic law. The classical Islamic penal rules are now codified into the current penal codes of a few Muslim-majority states, with necessary modifications.

Nationalism, Protestant ‘Modernity’ and the Reform of Islamic Law

2018 ◽  
pp. 91-114
Author(s):  
Todd M. Thompson
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Islamic Law ◽  
Legal Reform ◽  
Comparative Law ◽  
Academic Work ◽  
World War ◽  
The World ◽  
Muslim Intellectuals ◽  
Natural Law Theory ◽  
Oriental Studies

This chapter traces Anderson’s entry into the world of British academia as a specialist in Islamic law. It scrutinizes the attention paid by various British academics and Muslim intellectuals to Anderson’s academic work and the ways in which a Protestant conception of modernity influenced his analysis of Islamic legal reform. It situates Anderson’s academic work against the backdrop of the general evolution of oriental studies in Britain after World War II and the specific developments at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. It also highlights the ways in which Anderson’s attachment to natural law theory shaped his approach to comparative law and Islamic legal reform.

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