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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Codifying A Sharia-Based Criminal Law In Developing Muslim Countries, Paul H. Robinson
Codifying A Sharia-Based Criminal Law In Developing Muslim Countries, Paul H. Robinson
All Faculty Scholarship
This paper reproduces presentations made at the University of Tehran in March 2019 as part of the opening and closing remarks for a Conference on Criminal Law Development in Muslim-Majority Countries. The opening remarks discuss the challenges of codifying a Shari’a-based criminal code, drawing primarily from the experiences of Professor Robinson in directing codification projects in Somalia and the Maldives. The closing remarks apply many of those lessons to the situation currently existing in Iran. Included is a discussion of the implications for Muslim countries of Robinson’s social psychology work on the power of social influence and internalized norms that …
The Impossible, Highly Desired Islamic Bank, Haider Ala Hamoudi
The Impossible, Highly Desired Islamic Bank, Haider Ala Hamoudi
Articles
The purpose of this Article is to explore, and explain the stubborn persistence of, a central paradox that is endemic to the retail Islamic bank as it operates in the United States. The paradox is that retail Islamic banking in the United States is impossible, and yet it remains highly desired. It is impossible because the principles that are supposed to underlie the practice of Islamic finance deal with the trading of assets and the equitable sharing of risks, profits and losses among bank, depositor and portfolio investment. It is true that much of this can be, and is, circumvented …
Religious Minorities And Shari’A In Iraqi Courts, Haider Ala Hamoudi
Religious Minorities And Shari’A In Iraqi Courts, Haider Ala Hamoudi
Articles
There is a rising interest in our academy in the study of constitutional states, particularly in the Islamic world, whose legal and constitutional structure is at least as a formal matter both founded on and subject to religious doctrine. For those of us interested in the Arab spring, and indeed in constitutionalism in much of the Islamic world, this work is not only valuable, but positively vital. Without it, we are unable to discuss most emerging Arab democracies in constitutional terms. In Iraq, and in Egypt after it, two of the premier Arab states which have recently seen constitutions approved …
Repugnancy In The Arab World, Haider Ala Hamoudi
Repugnancy In The Arab World, Haider Ala Hamoudi
Articles
“Repugnancy clauses” -- those constitutional provisions that, in language that varies from nation to nation, require legislation to conform to some core conception of Islam -- are all the rage these days. This clause, a relatively recent addition to many modern constitutions, has emerged as a central focus of academic writing on Muslim state constitutions generally, and on Arab constitutions in particular. Much of the attention it has received has been enlightening and erudite. Yet one aspect of the broader repugnancy discourse that deserves some attention is an important, often de facto, temporal limitation on the effect of the clause. …
Ornamental Repugnancy: Identitarian Islam And The Iraqi Constitution, Haider Ala Hamoudi
Ornamental Repugnancy: Identitarian Islam And The Iraqi Constitution, Haider Ala Hamoudi
Articles
Nearly six years after the enactment of Iraq’s final constitution, the Federal Supreme Court of Iraq has yet to render a single ruling respecting the conformity of any law to the “settled rulings of Islam” despite being empowered to do precisely that under Article 2 of the Iraqi Constitution. This so-called repugnancy clause is swiftly devolving from a matter that was of some importance during constitutional negotiations into one that is more symbolic than real – an assertion of identity, primarily of the Islamic variety (though when combined with Article 92, to some extent of the Shi’i Islamic variety) – …
Dream Palaces Of Law: Western Constructions Of The Muslim Legal World, Haider Ala Hamoudi
Dream Palaces Of Law: Western Constructions Of The Muslim Legal World, Haider Ala Hamoudi
Articles
Western distortions of the Muslim East nearly always take the same form, irrespective of who in the West is doing the distorting. One common theme can be generally gleaned from any projections of the Muslim East in the West, in any Western country, among nearly every community, including, and perhaps especially, our own academic community. This is the perception of the near ubiquitous role of Islam and, more germane to my remarks, Islamic law, of a historic, medieval kind, in governing the legal order of Muslim states, including Iraq, in a manner that can be entirely distorting. In these brief …
Of Neocolonialism, Common Law And Uncodifiable Shari’A: A Reply To Professor An-Na’Im, Paul H. Robinson, Adnan Zulfiqar
Of Neocolonialism, Common Law And Uncodifiable Shari’A: A Reply To Professor An-Na’Im, Paul H. Robinson, Adnan Zulfiqar
All Faculty Scholarship
In an earlier article -- Robinson et al., Codifying Shari'a: International Norms, Legality & the Freedom to Invent New Forms, http://ssrn.com/abstract=941443 -- the authors report the challenges and opportunities that arose during their commission by the United Nations Development Programme and the Government of the Maldives to produce the first modern comprehensive criminal code based upon Shari'a. In this brief essay they respond to published criticisms of that project, which asserted, among other things, that Shari'a cannot be codified, that it should not be codified, that the project was a shameful exercise in neocolonialism, that the project was an act …