Book contents
- Frontmatter
- 1 Introduction: Muslims and modernity: culture and society in an age of contest and plurality
- PART I SOCIAL TRANSFORMATIONS
- PART II RELIGION AND LAW
- PART III POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC THOUGHT
- 16 Islamic political thought
- 17 Women, family and the law: the Muslim personal status law debate in Arab states
- 18 Culture and politics in Iran since the 1979 revolution
- 19 Modern Islam and the economy
- PART IV CULTURES, ARTS AND LEARNING
- Glossary
- Bibliography
- Index
- References
17 - Women, family and the law: the Muslim personal status law debate in Arab states
from PART III - POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC THOUGHT
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2011
- Frontmatter
- 1 Introduction: Muslims and modernity: culture and society in an age of contest and plurality
- PART I SOCIAL TRANSFORMATIONS
- PART II RELIGION AND LAW
- PART III POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC THOUGHT
- 16 Islamic political thought
- 17 Women, family and the law: the Muslim personal status law debate in Arab states
- 18 Culture and politics in Iran since the 1979 revolution
- 19 Modern Islam and the economy
- PART IV CULTURES, ARTS AND LEARNING
- Glossary
- Bibliography
- Index
- References
Summary
Introduction
In the late twentieth century, a combination of geopolitical developments focused particular attention on ‘the Islamic sharīʿa’ and specifically on its role as an identity and legitimacy signifier for opposition movements in and the governments of Muslim majority states. Positivist approaches to legislative power concentrated on the statutory expression of rules in different areas of state law. After varying periods of independent statehood, a number of post-colonial states promulgated instruments of statutory law presented as reintroducing the rules and sanctions of Islamic criminal law into penal systems otherwise largely based on colonial legislation. Systems of Islamic banking and Islamic finance developed apace. Constitutional arguments focused on the various formulations through which ‘the sharīʿa’ or ‘the principles of the sharīʿa’ are or should be established as a source (or the source) of statutory legislation. In different Muslim majority states, courts became a site for contestation of different perceptions of the requirements of the sharīʿa and the extent to which statutory laws and the state-appointed judiciary would defend or concede to these different invocations of ‘Islamic law’.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The New Cambridge History of Islam , pp. 411 - 437Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010