150-209 Crime Politics and Law in Islamic Society

Note

Available as 150-309 at 3rd-year level.

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Subject Description

In recent years, repeated calls have been made in Muslim countries by the Islamist movement for a truly Islamic society to be restored. The subject explores the three key areas on which the Islamist movement has focused in constructing a just society and contrast them with historical practice: (i) how Islamic law should operate in terms of its effects on women and the family, the economic and banking systems, and the education system: (ii) how the law should be enforced through the political and legal systems and the way in which specific penalties are used to define their Islamic character: (iii) how the law is to be understood and interpreted in modern times on the basis of classical texts. It will explore and analyse why the Islamist movement has emerged, and how and why its discourses have differed in various parts of the Islamic world. It will contextualise this by examining the importance of religious law in the Muslim world, and the history of the development of this law and its foundation texts, and the practice of law in the precolonial and colonial period. Finally it will look at the processes by which thinking about law has changed in Muslim societies under the pressures of local culture and modernity.

Assessment

Essays and assignments of no more than 5000 words.

Prescribed Texts

A Crime, Politics and Law in Islamic Society reader will be available