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The Kaffatan Constitution, Liaquat Ali Khan Nov 2013

The Kaffatan Constitution, Liaquat Ali Khan

Ali Khan

This Kaffatan Constitution is transformative energy guarding the peoples of the world, animals, and all life species that exist or may come to exist in the future. It transforms communities across the world, whether these communities are nation-states, provinces, cities, town, neighborhoods, or virtual communities, and turn them into Free States and Perfect Communities. Free State is Perfect Community and Perfect Community is Free State. The two are synonymous. Perfect Community is the radiance of Supreme Truth. Perfect Community evolves out of ordinary communities if, when, and while it seeks guidance from Supreme Truth. You are Perfect Community. You evolve …


The Paradoxical Evolution Of Law, Liaquat Ali Khan Dec 2011

The Paradoxical Evolution Of Law, Liaquat Ali Khan

Ali Khan

The paradoxical evolution of law authenticates durability and change. It mediates between the finite and the infinite. At a given point in time, law is a definitive corpus of rules and its constitutive norms can be identified and applied through specific legal methods. Despite its finitism, however, law accommodates a complex world imbued with absolute infinitism. Time, space, divinity, nature, causation, and consequences, all are infinite. As a general matter, human systems, including law, faced with infinitism manufactures finitism. In contracts, decedent’s estate, patents, searches and seizures, and other areas of law, law needs finite facts and finite rules to …


A Portfolio Theory Of Foreign Affairs: U.S. Relations With The Muslim World, Liaquat Ali Khan Jan 2011

A Portfolio Theory Of Foreign Affairs: U.S. Relations With The Muslim World, Liaquat Ali Khan

Ali Khan

The portfolio theory presents foreign policy as a series of financial, military, diplomatic, and ideological investments in international relations. Portfolios protect and promote the state’s interests through beneficial treaties, such as trade agreements, security measures, such as peace pacts and defense alliances, foreign assistance programs, cultural exchanges, and diplomatic initiatives to resolve global, regional, and bilateral problems. The portfolio theory explains how vested portfolios survive political changes and ideological shifts, preserving the foreign policy inertia and continuity. Contrary to popular expectations that the U.S. foreign policy would change with new administration, many portfolios do not change. U.S. portfolio managers frequently …


Taking Ownership Of Legal Outcomes: An Argument Against Dissociation Paradigm And Analytical Gaming, Ali Khan Jan 2011

Taking Ownership Of Legal Outcomes: An Argument Against Dissociation Paradigm And Analytical Gaming, Ali Khan

Ali Khan

This article argues that professional responsibilities arise within the connectionist web of laws, ethics, and personal conscience. Lawyers, judges, and law professors must not renounce personal responsibility in providing professional services. Willful reasoning derived from personal conscience alone, however, cannot be the driver of legitimate reasoning. Legal professionals must pursue cognitive coherence by connecting personal responsibility with the knowledge of laws and ethics. Lawyers must not accept the dissociation paradigm that forces them to game the system or surrender personal responsibility in serving clients. Judges must not accept the dissociation paradigm that forces them to game legal reasoning or serve …


Essay: The Quran And The Constitution, Ali Khan Mar 2010

Essay: The Quran And The Constitution, Ali Khan

Ali Khan

The Quran and the constitution are mutually supportive supreme texts; one does not negate the other. Numerous forms of government, cultural traditions, and economic systems are compatible with both supreme texts. Muslim nations are free to promulgate specific constitutions that reflect their social, political, and economic preferences rooted in history and culture. The specific constitution must reflect the conscience of the nation, for constitutions that fail to do so are vulnerable to amendment, even revolutionary replacement. Because the human condition is constantly evolving, the Quran, though a permanent divine text immune to alteration or amendment, is amenable to the evolutionary …


Faith-Based Torture, Ali Khan Jan 2010

Faith-Based Torture, Ali Khan

Ali Khan

This Essay focuses on faith-based torture perpetrated against Muslim detainees, torture that was crudely designed, only minimally seeking security-sensitive information. However, anti-Islamic torture - which has profoundly offended Muslim communities throughout the world - reaffirms the dark side of U.S. government policies that periodically single out populations, domestic and foreign, and subject them to cruelty. This dark side is evidenced by the degradation of Native Americans, enslavement of Western Africans, internment of Japanese-Americans, and slaughtering of the Vietnamese. More specifically, anti-Islamic torture has undermined what were sincere and substantial efforts of many American institutions to promote religious freedom at home …


The Quran And The Constitution, Ali Khan Jan 2010

The Quran And The Constitution, Ali Khan

Ali Khan

The Quran and the Constitution are mutually supportive supreme texts; one does not negate the other. Numerous forms of government, cultural traditions, and economic systems are compatible with both supreme texts. Muslim nations are free to promulgate specific constitutions that reflect their social, political, and economic preferences rooted in history and culture. The specific constitution must reflect the conscience of the nation, for constitutions that fail to do so are vulnerable to amendment, even revolutionary replacement. Because the human condition is constantly evolving, the Quran, though a permanent divine text immune to alteration or amendment, is amenable to the evolutionary …


The Baqa And Fana Infinities Of Islamic Law: Approaches To Islamic Law And Behavior, Ali Khan Jan 2010

The Baqa And Fana Infinities Of Islamic Law: Approaches To Islamic Law And Behavior, Ali Khan

Ali Khan

This article draws two main conclusions. First, meeting both the permanent and evolutionary needs of Muslim communities, Islamic law is a normative composite of baqā (eternal) and fanā (transient) sources of law. Islamic law founded on the Quran and the Prophet’s Sunnah (Basic Code) offers normative permanence to the extent that fundamental values of the Basic Code cannot be amended or repealed. However, Islamic positive law, comprised of fiqh, legislation, case law, local customs, and international law, evolves under the submission principle, a principle that requires positive law to submit to the Basic Code. Accordingly, no rule of positive law …


Jurodynamics Of Islamic Law, Ali Khan Jan 2009

Jurodynamics Of Islamic Law, Ali Khan

Ali Khan

Abrogation is a classical concept of Islamic law, which allows jurists to organize the normative complexity of divine texts. As a rule of temporality, abrogation invalidates prior rules found incompatible with subsequent rules. By stretching the rule, critics and reformers of Islamic law wish to abrogate substantial portions of the Quran and the Prophet's Sunnah. This methodology of modernizing Islamic law secures no following in the Muslim world, which jealously defends the integrity of divine texts. Jurodynamics of Islamic law offers a sophisticated methodology, which respects the integrity of divine texts, retains the jurisprudential heritage of past centuries, but at …


Temporality Of Law, Ali Khan Jan 2009

Temporality Of Law, Ali Khan

Ali Khan

Temporality is an integral part of law. But legal commentary offers no analytical model to probe the fusion of law and temporality. This study proposes such a model and presents the four general principles of law's temporality. First, the principle of temporal correlation yields legally significant inferences. Although temporality per se is not the agent of change, events that occur within a short duration of time are presumed to be causally related. Second, the principle of temporal inertia carries the dynamics of normative change and stability. It illustrates the doctrine of precedent and prohibitive injunctions as manifestations of temporal inertia. …


Protection Of Languages And Self-Expressions Under Islamic Law, Ali Khan Jan 2009

Protection Of Languages And Self-Expressions Under Islamic Law, Ali Khan

Ali Khan

The Islamic law of speech diversity recognizes two distinct divine rights, one applying to speech communities and the other to individuals. The divine right to language allows each speech community to preserve and celebrate its native language free of coercion and disrespect from other speech communities. Native languages are the assets of speech communities. The Islamic law prohibits coercive degradation of native languages but at the same time it interposes no barriers in learning other languages. Closely related to the right to language is the divine right to individual self-expression or self-determination. Each human being is unique because God, the …


The Immutability Of Divine Texts, Ali Khan Jan 2008

The Immutability Of Divine Texts, Ali Khan

Ali Khan

Divine texts are universal and timeless. They continue to guide communities and generations across the globe, as they have for centuries. Revealed in diverse cultures, languages, and legal traditions, divine texts share common themes to preserve human spirituality. No concept of prosperity, social advancement, or human rights will weaken the eternal influence of divine texts. Normative deviations from divine texts are transient. Spiritual needs that divine texts fulfill are permanent. The immutability of divine texts does not reside in interpretative gloss or exegetical methodologies. It does not dwell even in the sacred languages in which divine texts are revealed. Nor …


Advocacy Under Islam And Common Law, Ali Khan Jan 2008

Advocacy Under Islam And Common Law, Ali Khan

Ali Khan

This Article demonstrates that advocacy arose as a reformist doctrine under both Islamic and common law traditions. Reformist advocacy fights laws with laws. In this fight, both traditions require that the advocates striving for justice be courageous but courteous. The advocates must be courageous to challenge power-based injustices. They must be courteous because aggressive manners are not essential to effective advocacy. For a variety of reasons, reformist advocacy has lost its way in both traditions. Advocacy in the United States has turned to manipulation whereas advocacy in the Islamic tradition has embraced militancy. At a time when America and Islam …


A Theoretical Analysis Of Payment Systems, Ali Khan Jan 2008

A Theoretical Analysis Of Payment Systems, Ali Khan

Ali Khan

For over two hundred years, financial institutions have been providing payment services to transfer monies from accountholders to merchants and other payees. The market however is constantly searching for more efficient and reliable devices for institutional money transfers. Credit card and other electronic payments are, accordingly, capturing a big share of payment services over which negotiable instruments have long exercised a comfortable monopoly. This Article offers a coherent theoretical model to conceptually unify payment services delivered through old and new payment devices. The model derived from the assorted payment systems currently in use argues that the payment law must adhere …


Combating Defamation Of Religions, Ali Khan Jan 2007

Combating Defamation Of Religions, Ali Khan

Ali Khan

The idea of combating the defamation of religions, though morally sound, is difficult from a legislative viewpoint and will pose serious drafting challenges. The idea, however, poses no greater problems than prohibiting hate speech against racial, ethnic, or religious groups---a law adopted in almost all countries of the world except the United States. 11 One key function of law is to make distinctions and draw balance between competing rights. In the complex realm of human affairs, no right is absolute, not even free speech or the dignity of religion. Accordingly, the law against defamation of religions may be constructed in …


The Veil And The British Male Elite, Ali Khan Oct 2006

The Veil And The British Male Elite, Ali Khan

Ali Khan

All over the world, the law permits employers to impose reasonable grooming standards on employees. For example, the police officers may be prohibited from donning hippie hair and the schoolteachers may not be permitted to wear short skirts. Azmi will have a weak legal claim if the school can show a factual linkage between veil and teaching inefficacy. But that is not the point the British male elite, though known for their love of legal formalisms, is making. Their argument goes beyond the grooming standards at workplace. They wish to assimilate immigrant women into a prototypical woman who caters for …


Presidential Incitements To War Crimes, Ali Khan Sep 2006

Presidential Incitements To War Crimes, Ali Khan

Ali Khan

On the fifth anniversary of 9/11, President George Walker Bush delivered an illegal speech and may have committed an international crime, that is, the crime of direct and public incitement to commit genocide of a religious group.


Hagarism: The Story Of A Book Written By Infidels For Infidels, Ali Khan Apr 2006

Hagarism: The Story Of A Book Written By Infidels For Infidels, Ali Khan

Ali Khan

The book titled "Hagarism: The Making of the Islamic World," questions just about everything Muslims believe as historical truths. It challenges the common belief that the Quran was revealed to Prophet Muhammad over a period of 22 years (610-632) in Mecca and Medina. Instead, the book contends that the Quran was composed, possibly in Syria or Iraq, more than fifty years after the Prophet's death, projected back in time, and attributed to the Prophet. The Quran, according to the book, was fabricated during the reign of Caliph Abdul Malik (685- 705) to legitimize an expanding empire. The book also contends …


Free Markets Of Islamic Jurisprudence, Ali Khan Jan 2006

Free Markets Of Islamic Jurisprudence, Ali Khan

Ali Khan

This Article examines both internal and external scholarships and their respective contributions to the fiqh markets. It first explains that the fiqh markets are sustained through internal scholarship that shapes the rules of Islamic law. It later examines the role of external scholarship that might influence these markets. Although the fiqh markets are essentially Islamic, the external scholarship may offer clarifying insights and constructive criticisms. Such external scholarship may not directly influence the development of fiqh, but its indirect impact on the fiqh markets cannot be ignored. Finally, the Article also discusses the disengaged scholarship that manufactures disrespect against the …


An Islamic View Of The Battlefield, Ali Khan Jan 2006

An Islamic View Of The Battlefield, Ali Khan

Ali Khan

Islam rejects all conceptions of holy war. Muslims are not allowed to engage in any aggressive war to spread Islam or to impose its faith or laws on others. Muslims do not believe that God is at war with Satan, nor that He needs human help to win this battle. Any such belief is contrary to God's Unity and Sovereignty. God is above all human conflicts, and He has no conflict with Satan or any other force in the universe. God is Supreme and in complete control of all things that exist or belong to the world of the unknown. …


Forcing Them To Be Free: Bush's Project For The Muslim World, Ali Khan Jan 2006

Forcing Them To Be Free: Bush's Project For The Muslim World, Ali Khan

Ali Khan

Employing evangelical rhetoric, the Bush administration has launched an ambitious plan to bring democracy to the Muslim world. Several past presidents of the United States have endorsed the concept of popular government for various reasons. President George W. Bush draws on democracy to fight Islamist terrorism and spread liberty. The proposed democratisation of Muslim nations embodies a complex blend of American self-interest and the paternalistic American desire to reform the world. It is unclear whether the democracy initiative will survive the Bush government. The next president may scrap the entire project as unworkable or too expensive. However, if the US …


The New Commandment Of Political Murders: Thou Shall Not Kill--But We Will, Ali Khan Oct 2005

The New Commandment Of Political Murders: Thou Shall Not Kill--But We Will, Ali Khan

Ali Khan

Thou sall not kill, but we will. Under the new commandment, a priveleged state reserves the right to murder whomever it pleases, to condemn or condone political murders as it pleases. Here are three episodes that illuminate the new commandment. (This article has been submitted for the European Union Natali Prize, 2006).


Morality, Terrorism, And The Laws Of Motion, Ali Khan Jul 2005

Morality, Terrorism, And The Laws Of Motion, Ali Khan

Ali Khan

The laws of motion do not justify terrorist violence. Nor do they merge good and evil. Moral distinctions are important to live in human communities. Only the purest pacifist would claim that all violence is bad. Others would distinguish among forms of violence. Particularly governments would continue to defend violence in the name of morality and national security---ignoring the Newtonian warning that carnage begets carnage.


Poems, Ali Khan Apr 2005

Poems, Ali Khan

Ali Khan

I've never been to the Paradise, but I've seen the apples, grapes and pomegranates gently hanging by the trees and the breeze


Who Is Feeding The Bin Laden Legend, Ali Khan Jan 2005

Who Is Feeding The Bin Laden Legend, Ali Khan

Ali Khan

At first blush, any comparison between (Ro)bin Hood and bin Laden seems odd, most certainly to the English-speaking world for whom 'bin Hood is a romantic robber whereas bin Laden is a despised terrorist. The comparison might also displease Muslim militants who see bin Laden as a spiritual sheikh fighting the crusaders.


The Essentialist Terrorist, Ali Khan Jan 2005

The Essentialist Terrorist, Ali Khan

Ali Khan

There is a coordianted effort on part of academics, scholars, think-tankers, journalists and others to create a profle of Muslim militants as essentialist terrorists who commit heartless violence because they are spiritually addicted to violence. These authors argue that no concrete grievances or violations of rights cause Muslim militancy. Free to trash the core beliefs of Islam and free to make fun of Islamic creeds, the Highly influential Terrorist Literature (HITLit) has successfully equated puritan Islam with terrorism. Most HITLit authors, known as terrorism experts, are research associates with influential think tanks such as RAND and the American Enterprise Institute, …


The Jihad Of Alan Dershowitz, Ali Khan Sep 2004

The Jihad Of Alan Dershowitz, Ali Khan

Ali Khan

If to dispute well is law's chiefest end, Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz has honed this ability to a stunning craft. In high-profile cases, such as O. J. Simpson, Doctor Dershowitz, a seasoned criminal law jurist, serves as a media-savvy lawyer determined to defend the guilty. Less well known, however, is that this advocate thrives on inventing unpopular exceptions to international law-a subject he normally does not teach. This article is based on an interview with Professor Dershowitz.


The Reopening Of The Islamic Code: The Second Era Of Ijtihad, Ali Khan Jan 2003

The Reopening Of The Islamic Code: The Second Era Of Ijtihad, Ali Khan

Ali Khan

Resisting radical proposals for change, most Muslim communities are refusing to discard the entire past.Although some Islamic regimes have experimented with secularism - and Turkey has officially adopted non-amendable constitutional secularism - most Islamic nations reject the secular model of law under which legislative authority is reposed in institutions divorced from religion and law is separated from the principles of the Quran and the Sunna - the Basic Code. Mainstream Muslim scholars and jurists from across the world seem to have reached a near-consensus that, although the Basic Code cannot be abandoned, it must be re-interpreted to establish legal systems …


Islam As Intellectual Property: 'My Lord! Increase Me In Knowledge', Ali Khan Jan 2001

Islam As Intellectual Property: 'My Lord! Increase Me In Knowledge', Ali Khan

Ali Khan

The distinction between assets and ideas lies at the core of the misunderstanding between Islam and secularism, the strongest version of which is unfolding in the United States. Muslims view Islam as knowledge-based (intellectual) property, not an idea. Secularists reduce Islam to a mere idea, reserving the notion of intellectual property for literary and artistic works, inventions, patents, films, computer programs, designs, trademarks, and trade secrets. Muslims elevate the knowledge-based assets of Islam to the highest level of protection, more than the intellectual work of any scientist, artist, or corporation. Even in the face of a rising tide of secularism …


The Dignity Of Labor, Ali Khan Jan 2001

The Dignity Of Labor, Ali Khan

Ali Khan

The denigration of manual labor is a long, sad, captivating story of human civilization. No community can survive, let alone prosper, without the manual labor of farmers, industrial employees, construction workers, miners, and innumerable other men and women who toil to make everyone's day-to-day life possible. Yet a deeply entrenched prejudice against manual labor persists. Cultures and communities across the globe and throughout history have interwoven complex social, religious, and legal webs to create, maintain, and perpetuate a manual class that performs menial, difficult, and hazardous work. Weavers of these webs, including intellectual, political, and legal elites, personally benefit from …