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Set against the backdrop of the Arab Spring, The Sharia State examines the Islamist concept of political order. This order is based on a new interpretation of sharia and has been dubbed "the Islamic state" by Islamists. The concept of "the Islamic state," has been elevated to a political agenda and it is this agenda that is examined here. In contrast to the prevailing view which sees the Arab Spring as a revolution, this book argues that the phenomenon has been neither a Spring, nor a revolution. The term 'Arab Spring,' connotes a just rebellion that led to toppling dictators and authoritarian rulers, yet in The Sharia State, Bassam Tibi challenges the unchecked assumption that the seizure of leadership by Islamists is a part of the democratization of the Middle East. Providing a new perspective on the relationship between the Arab Spring and democratization, this book is an essential read for students and scholars of Middle Eastern Studies, Islamic Studies and Politics.
Perhaps no other Western writer has more deeply probed the bitter struggle in the Muslim world between the forces of religion and law and those of violence and lawlessness as Noah Feldman. His scholarship has defined the stakes in the Middle East today. Now, in this incisive book, Feldman tells the story behind the increasingly popular call for the establishment of the shari'a--the law of the traditional Islamic state--in the modern Muslim world. Western powers call it a threat to democracy. Islamist movements are winning elections on it. Terrorists use it to justify their crimes. What, then, is the shari'a? Given the severity of some of its provisions, why is it popular among Muslims? Can the Islamic state succeed--should it? Feldman reveals how the classical Islamic constitution governed through and was legitimated by law. He shows how executive power was balanced by the scholars who interpreted and administered the shari'a, and how this balance of power was finally destroyed by the tragically incomplete reforms of the modern era. The result has been the unchecked executive dominance that now distorts politics in so many Muslim states. Feldman argues that a modern Islamic state could provide political and legal justice to today's Muslims, but only if new institutions emerge that restore this constitutional balance of power. The Fall and Rise of the Islamic State gives us the sweeping history of the traditional Islamic constitution--its noble beginnings, its downfall, and the renewed promise it could hold for Muslims and Westerners alike.
What should be the place of Shari‘a—Islamic religious law—in predominantly Muslim societies of the world? In this ambitious and topical book, a Muslim scholar and human rights activist envisions a positive and sustainable role for Shari‘a, based on a profound rethinking of the relationship between religion and the secular state in all societies. An-Na‘im argues that the coercive enforcement of Shari‘a by the state betrays the Qur’an’s insistence on voluntary acceptance of Islam. Just as the state should be secure from the misuse of religious authority, Shari‘a should be freed from the control of the state. State policies or legislation must be based on civic reasons accessible to citizens of all religions. Showing that throughout the history of Islam, Islam and the state have normally been separate, An-Na‘im maintains that ideas of human rights and citizenship are more consistent with Islamic principles than with claims of a supposedly Islamic state to enforce Shari‘a. In fact, he suggests, the very idea of an “Islamic state” is based on European ideas of state and law, and not Shari‘a or the Islamic tradition. Bold, pragmatic, and deeply rooted in Islamic history and theology, Islam and the Secular State offers a workable future for the place of Shari‘a in Muslim societies.
In The Politics of Islamic Law, Iza Hussin compares India, Malaya, and Egypt during the British colonial period in order to trace the making and transformation of the contemporary category of ‘Islamic law.’ She demonstrates that not only is Islamic law not the shari’ah, its present institutional forms, substantive content, symbolic vocabulary, and relationship to state and society—in short, its politics—are built upon foundations laid during the colonial encounter. Drawing on extensive archival work in English, Arabic, and Malay—from court records to colonial and local papers to private letters and visual material—Hussin offers a view of politics in the colonial period as an iterative series of negotiations between local and colonial powers in multiple locations. She shows how this resulted in a paradox, centralizing Islamic law at the same time that it limited its reach to family and ritual matters, and produced a transformation in the Muslim state, providing the frame within which Islam is articulated today, setting the agenda for ongoing legislation and policy, and defining the limits of change. Combining a genealogy of law with a political analysis of its institutional dynamics, this book offers an up-close look at the ways in which global transformations are realized at the local level.
Wael B. Hallaq boldly argues that the "Islamic state," judged by any standard definition of what the modern state represents, is both impossible and inherently self-contradictory. Comparing the legal, political, moral, and constitutional histories of premodern Islam and Euro-America, he finds the adoption and practice of the modern state to be highly problematic for modern Muslims. He also critiques more expansively modernity's moral predicament, which renders impossible any project resting solely on ethical foundations. The modern state not only suffers from serious legal, political, and constitutional issues, Hallaq argues, but also, by its very nature, fashions a subject inconsistent with what it means to be, or to live as, a Muslim. By Islamic standards, the state's technologies of the self are severely lacking in moral substance, and today's Islamic state, as Hallaq shows, has done little to advance an acceptable form of genuine Shari'a governance. The Islamists' constitutional battles in Egypt and Pakistan, the Islamic legal and political failures of the Iranian Revolution, and similar disappointments underscore this fact. Nevertheless, the state remains the favored template of the Islamists and the ulama (Muslim clergymen). Providing Muslims with a path toward realizing the good life, Hallaq turns to the rich moral resources of Islamic history. Along the way, he proves political and other "crises of Islam" are not unique to the Islamic world nor to the Muslim religion. These crises are integral to the modern condition of both East and West, and by acknowledging these parallels, Muslims can engage more productively with their Western counterparts.
This book analyses the formulation, interpretation and implementation of sharia in Pakistan and its relationship with the Pakistani state whilst addressing the complexity of sharia as a codified set of laws. Drawing on insights from Islamic studies, anthropology and legal studies to examine the interactions between ideas, institutions and political actors that have enabled blasphemy laws to become the site of continuous controversy, this book furthers the readers' understanding of Pakistani politics and presents the transformation of sharia from a pluralistic religious precepts to a set of rigid laws. Using new materials, including government documents and Urdu language newspapers, the author contextualises the larger political debate within Pakistan and utilises a comparative and historical framework to weave descriptions of various events with discussions on sharia and blasphemy. A contribution to the growing body of literature, which explores the role of state in shaping the religion and religious politics in Muslim-majority countries, this book will be of interest to academics working on South Asian Politics, Political Islam, Sharia Law, and the relationship of Religion and the State.
This book explores the legal dimension of the Islamic State, an aspect which has hitherto been neglected in the literature. ISIS’ dystopian experience, intended as a short-lived territorial and political governance, has been analyzed from multiple points of view, including the geopolitical, social and religious ones. However, its legal dimension has never been properly dealt with in a comprehensive way, assuming as a point of reference both the Islamic and the Western legal tradition. This book analyzes ISIS as the expression of a potential though never fully realized legal order. The book does not describe ISIS’ possible classifications according to the standards and the criteria of international law, such as its possible statehood or proto-statehood, issues that are however touched upon. Rather, it analyzes ISIS’ own legal awareness, based on the group’s literary materials, which show a considerable amount of juridical work. Such material, mainly propagandistic in its nature, is essential in understanding which kind of legal order ISIS aimed at establishing. The book will be of interest to students and academics in the fields of Law, International Relations, Political Sciences, Terrorism Studies, Religion and Middle Eastern Studies.
This book examines the legal nature of Islamic states and the human rights they have committed to uphold. It begins with an overview of the political history of Islam, and of Islamic law, focusing primarily on key developments of the first two centuries of Islam. Building on this foundation, the book presents the first study into Islamic constitutions to map the relationship between Sharia and the state in terms of institutions of governance. It then assesses the place of Islamic law in the national legal order of all of today's Islamic states, before proceeding to a comprehensive analysis of those states' adherences to the UN human rights treaties, and finally, a set of international human rights declarations made jointly by Islamic states. Throughout, the focus remains on human rights. Having examined Islamic law first in isolation, then as it reflects into state structures and national constitutional orders, the book provides the background necessary to understand how an Islamic state's treaty commitments reflect into national law. In this endeavour, the book unites three strands of analysis: the compatibility of Sharia with the human rights enunciated in UN treaties; the patterns of adherence of Islamic states with those treaties; and the compatibility of international Islamic human rights declarations with UN standards. By exploring the international human rights commitments of all Islamic states within a single analytical framework, this book will appeal to international human rights and constitutional scholars with an interest in Islamic law and states. It will also be useful to readers with a general interest in the relationships between Sharia, Islamic states, and internationally recognised human rights.
By examining the intersection of Islamic law, state law, religion, and culture in the Egyptian nation-building process, Recasting Islamic Law highlights how the sharia, when attached to constitutional commitments, is reshaped into modern Islamic state law. Rachel M. Scott analyzes the complex effects of constitutional commitments to the sharia in the wake of the Egyptian Revolution of 2011. She argues that the sharia is not dismantled by the modern state when it is applied as modern Islamic state law, but rather recast in its service. In showing the particular forms that the sharia takes when it is applied as modern Islamic state law, Scott pushes back against assumptions that introductions of the sharia into modern state law result in either the revival of medieval Islam or in its complete transformation. Scott engages with premodern law and with the Ottoman legal legacy on topics concerning Egypt's Coptic community, women's rights, personal status law, and the relationship between religious scholars and the Supreme Constitutional Court. Recasting Islamic Law considers modern Islamic state law's discontinuities and its continuities with premodern sharia. Thanks to generous funding from Virginia Tech and its participation in TOME (Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem), the ebook editions of this book are available as Open Access volumes from Cornell Open (cornellpress.cornell.edu/cornell-open) and other repositories.
The dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, through the British mandate and the establishment of the state of Israel, created a reality in which no Muslim legislator existed in the country. Thus, the chief judge—Qadi al Qudat, due to the dire need for reforms in the Sharia' family law and in order to minimize the intervention of the non-Muslim—Israeli legislator in the divine family law, took it upon himself to initiate the reforms. As such, this experience is considered the world-wide pioneerand unique in its scope. The reforms were done in accordance with the Islamic rules of renewal and are derived from the Islamic jurisprudence—sharia' itself. This process was done in two tracks: first, decisions of the High Court of Appeals would be followed by the lower courts as binding precedents. Second, the president of the High Sharia' court issued judicial decrees guidelines to the lower courts, driven by the Maslaha - the public interest - in various matters of Islamic law such as promoting women status, children's rights and the preservation of Islamic sites and cemeteries sanctity.