What is a contract in Islam? Is it an aspect of Muslim religion or of secular life? How much has it changed over the centuries? Undertaking a search that spans revelation, legal tradition, and the reality of the Muslim world, this book explores the Islamic contract (‘aqd in Arabic) as a ‘city’ at the crossroads of convergent paths of translation, comparison, and law in context. In particular, the book shows that only by re-orienting traditional categories of Western law-religion toward the East can an alternative path of discovery for the ‘aqd be advanced. Hence, through a fortuitous encounter with an Arab Girl, the reader will (re-)visit the Temple of Western modernity and explore a city ruled by Towers of dialectical forces, carrying a hermeneutical Ring that combines dialectics, Islamic studies, and media theory. This interdisciplinary approach will not only enrich our knowledge of the ‘aqd but also make it more understandable as a cultural and social construction to which both Muslims and non-Muslims have participated in forging its multiple representations. By inviting the readers ‘to know who they are’ while looking at her, the Arab Girl is already waiting for us to listen to the Islamic contract in a new way. By applying a distinctive law and religion approach to the study of the contract in Islam, the book provides a comprehensive exploration of a topic that is of interest to legal and economic comparatists as well as to readers in anthropology, Islamic and cultural studies, and it is also of topical meaning for today’s international lawyers and the operators of an increasingly multicultural and transnational market.

This volume presents ten leading scholars' writings on contemporary Islamic law and Muslim thought. The essays examine a range of issues, from modern Muslim discourses on justice, natural law, and the common good, to democracy, the social contract, and "the authority of the preeminent jurist." Changes in how Shari'a has been understood over the centuries are explored, as well as how it has been applied in both Sunni and Shi'i Islam. Debates on the nature, interpretation, reform, and application of Shari'a lie at the core of all Islamist revivalist ideologies and movements of the past two centuries. The demand for the implementation of Shari'a is one of the hallmarks of Islamic fundamentalism, and Shari'a has become one of the most controversial and politicized concepts in Muslim-majority countries today. This is one of the first books to examine how Muslims understand and apply Shari'a in contemporary societies.

This is the first broad study of the treatment of intent in Islamic law, examining ritual, commercial, family, and penal law and providing new insights into Muslim understandings of law, religious ritual, action, agency, and language.

This book introduces students to the theoretical and philosophical foundations of Islamic contractual law. Islamic law is applied in differing degrees by many countries across the world and especially in the Middle East. Considering the strategic and financial importance of these countries, taken as a whole, it is surprising how little academic writing exists in the West on either Islamic law or Middle Eastern law. Recently, there have been signs of a burgeoning interest in Middle Eastern law. However, traditional Islamic law remains a neglected area of study. Hussein Hassan makes a significant contribution by presenting a detailed survey (which utilizes both contemporary and classical sources) of a crucially important area of Islamic law - contract law - and by adopting an approach that gives priority to theory and to a comparative analysis with Anglo-American law theory. Contracts in Islamic Law offers an invaluable resource to academics and researchers with a specific interest in Islamic law, to postgraduate students and final year students of law, and to scholars whose main focus is Anglo-American contract law but who are interested in comparative law/theory. The book will also appeal to a non-legal readership working in Islamic studies more generally.

Analysing the rules governing the treatment of foreigners in Islam and situating them in their historical, political, and legal context, this book sets out a new framework for understanding these rules as part of a wider problem of governing through law amidst pluralism.

Richard A. Debs analyzes the classical Islamic law of property based on the Shari'ah, traces its historic development in Egypt, and describes its integration as a source of law within the modern format of a civil code. He focuses specifically on Egypt, a country in the Islamic world that drew upon its society's own vigorous legal system as it formed its modern laws. He also touches on issues that are common to all such societies that have adopted, either by choice or by necessity, Western legal systems. Egypt's unique synthesis of Western and traditional elements is the outcome of an effort to respond to national goals and requirements. Its traditional law, the Shari'ah, is the fundamental law of all Islamic societies, and Debs's analysis of Egypt's experience demonstrates how Islamic jurisprudence can be sophisticated, coherent, rational, and effective, developed over centuries to serve the needs of societies that flourished under the rule of law.

This volume collects papers from many disciplines examining the Muslim marriage contract. Articles cover doctrines as to marriage contracts; historical instances; comparisons with Jewish and canon law; contemporary legal and social practice; and projects of activists for women worldwide.