The Shari'a and Islamic Criminal Justice in Time of War and Peace

[elleng]

x-post from GD, for attention

by M. Cherif Bassiouni, my law school professor

This innovative and important book applies classical Sunni Muslim legal and religious doctrine to contemporary issues surrounding armed conflict. In doing so it shows that the shari'a and Islamic law are not only compatible with contemporary international human rights law and international humanitarian law norms, but are appropriate for use in Muslim societies. By grounding contemporary post-conflict processes and procedures in classical Muslim legal and religious doctrine, it becomes more accessible to Muslim societies who are looking for appropriate legal mechanisms to deal with the aftermath of armed conflict. This book uniquely presents a critique of the violent practices of contemporary Muslims and Muslim clerics who support these practices. It rebuts Islamophobes in the West that discredit Islam on the basis of the abhorrent practices of some Muslims, and hopes to reduce tensions between Western and Islamic civilizations by enhancing common understanding of the issues.

to be published shortly, Cambridge University Press

http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/law/human-rights/shari-and-islamic-criminal-justice-time-war-and-peace

[Igel]

1. "Can be" =/= "would be".

It's advocacy, an apologia, a defense or a justification.

It is showing that "X is not always bad" by showing "there is at least one possible situation in which is good." Modality's always rough in 1st order logic. This kind of apologia is a really, really weak defense.

The current Iranian president's thesis was on the flexibility of shari'a for the modern world. He wrote this as a student in Glasgow, an exchange student under Khomeini. It's taken as a defense of what the guy believes (or, at least, believed). It can also be taken as a defense of shari'a in the face of Western criticism during the height of the Islamization under the Khomeini regime. I point this out to show that apologia are fairly cheap, esp. in a religious tradition where obedience to authority can be limited only by your reasoning and the importance of your work is limited only by how willing others are to accept it as binding. For many, ijtihad is closed (yes, ijtihad has as its root 'jihad'). Others want to open it up again.


Even historically the best anybody shows is that there were times when the best Islamic society was better in at least some ways than the worst Christian society. Maimonides in Andalusia, who was proscribed by law from writing Arabic in kufic because he wasn't Muslim, is a good thing in comparison to anti-Jewish pogroms. This, too, is a really weak defense. It's not hard to find Christian societies at the same time that were better than the worst Muslim societies.

[msongs]

2. superstition is a bad way to create and enforce laws nt