110-014 Crime Politics & Law in Islamic Society

This subject explores the three key areas on which the Islamist movement has focused in constructing a just society and contrasts them with historical practice. Students will examine how Islamic law should operate in terms of its effects on women, the family, the economic and banking systems, and the education system; 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; and how the law is to be understood and interpreted in modern times on the basis of classical texts. Students will explore and analyse why the Islamist movement has emerged, and contextualise this by examining religious law in the Muslim world, the history of this law and its foundation texts, and the practice of law in the precolonial and colonial period. Finally students will look at the altered perspectives within Muslim societies under the pressures of local culture and modernity.