2011 Updated Reprint. Updated Annually. Islamic International Law and Jihad (War) Law Handbook

2011 Updated Reprint. Updated Annually. Islamic International Law and Jihad (War) Law Handbook

A three-part investigation on the origins and evolving roles that Islamic law and international humanitarian law have played in regulating conflict and violence, War and Law in the Islamic World brings to light legal and policy complexities that plague modern-day armed conflict in the region.

The question of how Islamic law regulates the notions of just recourse to and just conduct in war has long been the topic of heated controversy, and is often subject to oversimplification in scholarship and journalism. This book traces the rationale for aggression within the Islamic tradition, and assesses the meaning and evolution of the contentious concept of jihad. The book reveals that there has never been a unified position on what Islamic warfare tangibly entails, due to the complexity of relevant sources and discordant historical dynamics that have shaped the contours of jihad. Onder Bakircioglu advocates a dynamic reading of Islamic law and military tradition; one which prioritises the demands of contemporary international relations and considers the meaning and application of jihad as contingent on the socio-political forces of each historical epoch. This book will be of great interest to scholars and students of international law, Islamic law, war and security studies, and the law of armed conflict.

Al-Dawoody examines the justifications and regulations for going to war in both international and domestic armed conflicts under Islamic law. He studies the various kinds of use of force by both state and non-state actors in order to determine the nature of the Islamic law of war.

The traditional doctrine of Islamic law in regard to international re lations is well known. The Shari'a includes many excellent provisions about declarations of war, treaties of peace, armistices, diplomatic envoys, negotiations and guarantees of safe conduct. But the fact remains that it divides the world, broadly speaking, into the "Abode of Islam" and the "Abode of 'War," and that it envisages the continu ance of intermittent war between them until the latter is absorbed in the former. In the course of such fighting, and in the intervals in be tween, many civilities were to be meticulously observed; but prisoners of war could be killed, sold or enslaved at the discretion of the Muslim authorities, and the women of those who resisted the advance of Islam could be taken as slave-concubines, regardless of whether they were single or married. The "Abode of Islam" did not, indeed, consist ex clusively of Muslims, for those whose religion was based on a book accepted by Islam as originally inspired and in practice, indeed, those other religions too - were not forced to embrace Islam but only to accept Muslim rule. They were granted the status of dhimmis, were protected in their persons and their property, were allowed to follow their own religion in an unobtrusive fashion, and were accorded the position of essentially second-class citizens. They were also of course, perfectly free to embrace Islam; but for a Muslim to be converted to another faith involved the death penalty.