Islamic law is one of the major legal systems in the world today, yet it is often misunderstood, particularly in the West. This book provides a critical overview of the theory, scope, and practice of Islamic law, taking into account both classical and modern scholarly perspectives in examining the various facets of this key legal system.

According to Susan Deller Ross, many human rights advocates still do not see women's rights as human rights. Yet women in many countries suffer from laws, practices, customs, and cultural and religious norms that consign them to a deeply inferior status. Advocates might conceive of human rights as involving torture, extrajudicial killings, or cruel and degrading treatment—all clearly in violation of international human rights—and think those issues irrelevant to women. Yet is female genital mutilation, practiced on millions of young girls and even infants, not a gross violation of human rights? When a family decides to murder a daughter in the name of "honor," is that not an extrajudicial killing? When a husband rapes or savagely beats his wife, knowing the legal authorities will take no action on her behalf, is that not cruel and degrading treatment? Women's Human Rights is the first human rights casebook to focus specifically on women's human rights. Rich with interdisciplinary material, the book advances the study of the deprivation and violence women suffer due to discriminatory laws, religions, and customs that deny them their most fundamental freedoms. It also provides present and future lawyers the legal tools for change, demonstrating how human rights treaties can be used to obtain new laws and court decisions that protect women against discrimination with respect to employment, land ownership, inheritance, subordination in marriage, domestic violence, female genital mutilation, polygamy, child marriage, and the denial of reproductive rights. Ross examines international and regional human rights treaties in depth, including treaty language and the jurisprudence and general interpretive guidelines developed by human rights bodies. By studying how international human rights law has been and can be implemented at the domestic level through local courts and legislatures, readers will understand how to call upon these newly articulated human rights to help bring about legislation, court decisions, and executive action that protect women from human rights violations.

Christian-Muslim Relations, a Bibliographical History 12 (CMR 12) covering the Middle East, South and Southeast Asia, Africa and the Americas in the period 1700-1800 is a further volume in a general history of relations between the two faiths from the 7th century to the early 20th century. It comprises a series of introductory essays and also the main body of detailed entries which treat all the works, surviving or lost, that have been recorded. These entries provide biographical details of the authors, descriptions and assessments of the works themselves, and complete accounts of manuscripts, editions, translations and studies. The result of collaboration between numerous leading scholars, CMR 12, along with the other volumes in this series, is intended as a basic tool for research in Christian-Muslim relations. Section Editors: Clinton Bennett, Luis F. Bernabe Pons, Jaco Beyers, Emanuele Colombo, Karoline Cook, Sinéad Cussen, Lejla Demiri, Martha Frederiks, David D. Grafton, Stanisław Grodź, Alan Guenther, Emma Gaze Loghin, Gordon Nickel, Claire Norton, Reza Pourjavady, Douglas Pratt, Radu Păun, Charles Ramsey, Peter Riddell, Umar Ryad, Mehdi Sajid, Cornelia Soldat, Karel Steenbrink, Ann Thomson, Carsten Walbiner

A history of the rediscovery of India's history... Through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the Western world had very little knowledge - or an extremely distorted view - of the glorious and fascinating history of the Indian subcontinent. In fact, with little of the region's 3000-year-old heritage formally preserved and documented, it was widely believed that the country's history had begun with the reign of the Mughals. When the British gained control over the subcontinent, the scholars, explorers and Indophiles among them discovered things and areas of great historical wonder but found few answers. Armed with great intellectual curiosity, they set out to uncover things no one had given a thought to earlier. From William Jones who identified Chandragupta Maurya as 'Sandrocottus' mentioned in Greek sources and set the first chronological point of reference for recorded Indian history to Charles Wilkins who designed the first typeface of the Bengali script; from Henry Colebrooke who shone light on the wonders of ancient Indian scientific knowledge to Alexander Cunningham, the father of Indian archaeology, who led the first excavation of the Harappa site in the Punjab - Forgotten Civilizations brings together the intriguing stories of fifteen intrepid Englishmen who dedicated their lives to rediscovering India's ancient heritage and redefining the significance of its pluralistic and sophisticated culture to the rest of the world.