Law Commons^™

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 …

Operating Islamic Jurisprudence In Non-Muslim Jurisdictions: Traditional Islamic Precepts And Contemporary Controversies In The United States, Mustafa R. K. Baig

Chicago-Kent Law Review

With the recent public furor in the United States regarding “Shari‘a,” studies into the content of Islamic jurisprudence concerning Muslims living under non-Muslim jurisdiction are more pertinent than ever in the U.S. context. As “anti-Shari‘a” rhetoric has increased in fervency, informed input into the debates could go some way in correcting the peddled misconceptions. The paper begins by assessing how Muslim scholars viewed a Muslim’s travel to and residence in non-Muslim lands, and the obligation to abide by the laws of the land. It will focus on the jihad (siyar) section in Islamic jurisprudence and the section on …

Sex And The Shari’A: Defining Gender Norms And Sexual Deviancy In Shi’I Islam, Haider Ala Hamoudi

Articles

This paper demonstrates that modern authoritative jurists working within the Shi’i tradition have developed their rules respecting sex regulation to serve three primary commitments. The first of these is that there is an intense and near debilitating desire on the part of human beings generally, though mostly men, for a great deal of sex. This desire must be satisfied, but it also must be tightly controlled. This is because of the second commitment, which is that excessive licentiousness is a form of secular distraction from a believer’s central obligation to worship God. Finally, and perhaps the most interesting, is the …

Do All Roads Lead To Islamic Radicalism? A Comparison Of Islamic Laws In India And Nigeria, Amitabha Bose

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

The Death Of Islamic Law, Haider Ala Hamoudi

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

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

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 …

Is The Middle East Moving Toward Islamism After The Arab Spring? The Case Study Of The Egyptian Commercial And Financial Laws, Radwa S. Elsaman, Ahmed Eldakak

Richmond Journal of Global Law & Business

The first parliamentary elections that followed the Egyptian Revolution witnessed an unprecedented success for Islamists as they secured an overwhelming majority of seats in parliament, suggesting that they may intend to amend many laws to bring parliament into compliance with Islamic Shari’a. This article addresses legal challenges that will face the new majority if they decide to Islamize laws and regulations related to business and finance. Particularly, the article discusses Islamic money theory, trade, banking systems, consumer protection, insurance, competition, and tax systems. The article analyzes Egyptian business and finance laws to examine whether they comply with Islamic law. It …

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. …

Ijtihad Institutions: The Key To Islamic Democracy Bridging And Balancing Political And Intellectual Islam, Adham A. Hashish

Richmond Journal of Global Law & Business

No abstract provided.

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) – …

The Death Of Islamic Law, Haider Ala Hamoudi

Articles

That lawmaking in many modern Muslim nation states appears to give rather short shrift to shari’a, seemingly ignoring it in all areas save the law of the family and replacing it elsewhere with European transplanted law, has been discussed. That the Muslim world is replete with political institutions and leaders that seek a greater role than this for the shari’a in the affairs of the state is obvious to anyone even faintly familiar with the region.

However, left undiscussed is the fact that the Islamist, who derives his authority precisely on the basis of returning sovereignty to God in all …

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

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 …

Islamic Law In The Jurisprudence Of The International Court Of Justice: An Analysis, Clark B. Lombardi

Articles

This Article asks whether ICJ opinions to date suggest that judicial consideration of Islamic legal norms has played, can play, or should play a role in the ICJ's resolution of international legal disputes or in establishing the legitimacy of the results that it has reached. It is structured as follows. Part II gives an initial overview of the ICJ to help us understand how and why judges on the ICJ have reached the answers they have. Part III describes how the ICJ's enabling statute permits the Court, at least in theory, to look at Islamic legal norms. As I will …

Codifying Shari'a: International Norms, Legality & The Freedom To Invent New Forms, Paul H. Robinson, Adnan Zulfiqar, Margaret Kammerud, Michael Orchowski, Elizabeth A. Gerlach, Adam L. Pollock, Thomas M. O'Brien, John C. Lin, Tom Stenson, Negar Katirai, J. John Lee, Marc Aaron Melzer

All Faculty Scholarship

The United Nations Development Program and the Republic of the Maldives, a small Muslim country with a constitutional democracy, commissioned this project to craft the country's first system of codified penal law and sentencing guidelines. This Article describes the special challenges and opportunities encountered while drafting a penal code based on Shari'a (Islamic law). On the one hand, such comprehensive codification is more important and more likely to bring dramatic improvements in the quality of justice than in many other societies, due in large part to the problems of assuring fair notice and fair adjudication in the uncodified Shari'a-based system …

The Shari'a Factor In International Commercial Arbitration, Faisal M. Kutty

ExpressO

The world has witnessed a phenomenal growth in commercial disputes transcending national borders due to our increasingly interrelated and globalized world economy. In addition to issues in interpretation of commercial agreements and practices, differences in custom, language, culture and religion will continue to fuel conflicts and disagreements between commercial players. Over the last few decades there have been growing commercial interaction between Western companies and their Middle Eastern counterparts. Given this interaction and the great geo-political and economic importance of this region, it is imperative that Western lawyers and dispute resolution professionals have a reasonable grasp of the general principles …