Previous ed.: Cambrige, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996.

The Anthropology of Islamic Law shows how hermeneutic theory and practice theory can be brought together to analyze cultural, legal, and religious traditions. These ideas are developed through an analysis of the Islamic legal tradition, which examines both Islamic legal doctrine and religious education. The book combines anthropology and Islamicist history, using ethnography and in-depth analysis of Arabic religious texts. The book focuses on higher religious learning in contemporary Egypt, examining its intellectual, ethical, and pedagogical dimensions. Data is drawn from fieldwork inside al-Azhar University, Cairo University's Dar al-Ulum, and the network of traditional study circles associated with the al-Azhar mosque. Together these sites constitute the most important venue for the transmission of religious learning in the contemporary Muslim world. The book gives special attention to contemporary Egypt, and also provides a broader analysis relevant to Islamic legal doctrine and religious education throughout history.

This book considers the rarely studied but pervasive concepts of doubt that medieval Muslim jurists used to resolve problematic criminal cases.

Text and Interpretation: Imam Ja'far al-Sadiq and his Legacy in Islamic Law examines the main characteristics of the legal thought of Imam Ja'far al-Sadiq, a preeminent religious scholar and jurist of Medina in the first half of the second centuty of the Islamic calendar (mid-eighth century CE), Numerous works in different languages have appeared over the past half century to introduce this school of Islamic law and its history, legal theory, and substance in contexts of Shi'i law. While previous literature has focused on the later stages of the school in its developed and expanded form, this book presents an intellectual history of how the school began. The Ja'fari school emerged within the general legal discourse of late Umayyad and early Abbasid periods, but it was known to differ in certain approaches from the other main legal schools of that time. In addition to sketching the origins of the school, this book examines Ja'far al-Sadiq's interpretive approach through detailing his position on a number of specific questions, as well as the legal canons, presumptions, and other interpretive tools he adopted. Book jacket.

Focuses on a Muslim legal science known in Arabic as usul al-fiqh. Whereas the kindred science of fiqh is concerned with the articulation of actual rules of law, this science attempts to elaborate the theoretical and methodological foundations of the law. It outlines the features of Muslim juristic thought.

One of the most important branches of principles of Islamic jurisprudence ('usul al-fiqh') is the study of the usage of language. 'Language and the Interpretation of Islamic Law' is the first work to appear in English dealing with this important aspect of Islamic law.

"Islamic Law and International Law is a comprehensive examination of differences and similarities between the Islamic legal tradition and international law, especially in the context of dispute settlement. Sharia embraces a unique logic and culture of justice--based on nonconfrontational dispute resolution--as taught by the Quran and the Prophet Muhammad. This book explains how the creeds of Islamic dispute resolution shape the Islamic milieu's views of international law. Is the Islamic legal tradition ab initio incompatible with international law, and how do states of the Islamic milieu view international courts, mediation, and arbitration? Islamic law constitutes an important part of the domestic legal system in many states of the Islamic milieu--Islamic law states--displacing secular law in state governance and affecting these states' contemporary international dealings. The book analyzes constitutional and subconstitutional laws in Islamic law states. The answer to the "Islamic law-international law nexus puzzle" lies in the diversity of how secular laws and religious laws fuse in domestic legal systems across the Islamic milieu. These states are not Islamic to the same degree or in the same way. Thus, different international conflict management methods appeal to different states, depending on each one's domestic legal system. The main claim of the book is that in many instances the Islamic legal tradition points in one direction while Western-based, secularized international law points in another direction. This conflict is partially softened by the reality that the Islamic legal tradition itself has elements fundamentally compatible with modern international law. Islamic legal tradition, international law, sharia settlement, peaceful dispute resolution"--