Islamic Law

The U.S. Muslim population, although currently only comprising one percent of all Americans, is on the rise. Muslim Americans are largely assimilated, happy with their lives, moderate with respect to divisive issues, and opposed to violence. Nonetheless, in recent years, a growing misunderstanding and fear of Muslims have led some activists to seek to ban the application of Islamic law, or Sharia, in American courts, despite the lack of evidence of an increase in the use of Sharia in the U.S.

Muslim jurists took it for granted that since Islamic law was a divinely ordained system, its origin had nothing to do with pre-Islamic law. Some went so far as to assert that Islam cancelled all the legal systems that preceded it since the Koran provided a "detailed account of everything."' Others, especially the Hanafi jurists, recognized as valid only those pre-Islamic rules and practices which were not expressly abrogated by divine legislation.

Traditional Islamic jurisprudence deals primarily with the character and status of the shari'a the sacred law of Islam governing the most important aspects of the life of Muslims and the Islamic community. The shar'a is based on revelations of God to the Prophet Muhammad recorded in the Qur'a.n, but also includes statements and traditions of Muhammad as ruler of the Islamic community and, to a lesser extent, those of his immediate successors.

Professor Lori Damrosch has long been interested in the role that Islamic law has played in shaping the evolution of international law. This Article is an attempt to answer a question she once asked the author. 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.

Muslim societies now have embraced, more or less, the ideas and institutions of constitutionalism. It may be said that the rule of law, public consent to the political authority, and basic citizens' entitlements are among the main constituent elements of constitutionalism. The modern law holds a particular status among those elements. It is, inter alia, state-made and amoral, and functions as a the unifying thread in the fabric of constitutionalism, which in turn regulates a nation (i.e., a pluralistic society)

The development of Islamic banking simultaneously represents an expansion of the global financial system, a revival and re-adaptation of Shari'ah principles along with a spectrum of cultures and polities, and a potential bridge across gaps that increasingly divide Muslims from one another and from other great civilizations. Islamic finance is a natural magnet for interdisciplinary and cross-cultural researchers.

The burgeoning westernization of economic life, political administration, and technology in the Near East has disrupted national legal systems which have never been fully secularized. Professor Bonder man finds several patterns of response to the pressures for reform, all deeply contoured by the peculiar history of Islamic law.

Can the position of women under Islamic law be reconciled with the Prophet's apparent respect and care for them? Does Islam consider and support women as equal partners, or does it discriminate against them, undermine their position in legal proceedings and prevent them from fully participating in public life? These questions trouble people both within and outside the Muslim world, for
Islam, practised by 1.3 billion people, is the fastest-growing religion.

Contemporary Islamic law is currently facing this challenge of change. Because the state is not the only repository of legal authority in Islamic law, the legitimacy of its governance, and therefore any change to the traditional law, is commonly called into question. Where the modern Muslim state has succeeded in bringing about reform of traditional Islamic law, it has done so largely with the help of independent scholars of Islamic law, the true repositories of the law