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Understanding Islamic Law, by Raj Bhala
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The demand for a book like Understanding Islamic Law among law students and legal practitioners in America and throughout the English-speaking world is large and growing. Islamic Law is not merely a "hot topic." It is a growing trend that is an increasingly mainstream fixture in the legal landscape. There is nothing currently on the market for Law Schools, like Understanding Islamic Law, that is a comprehensive text, in English, by a non-Muslim law professor.
The first 11 chapters of Understanding Islamic Law give the essential foundational materials for the study of Islamic Law. The remaining chapters cover several other pertinent fields: banking and finance, contracts, criminal law, family law, and property.
Understanding Islamic Law also:
• Includes Arabic terms, in English, with diacritical marks to assist in pronunciation;
• Provides A Glossary of Arabic Terms; and
• Incorporates recent developments such as the burkha ban in France.
Understanding Islamic Law (Sharia) is a thorough and balanced text that can be used without supplementation in a one-semester Islamic Law course.
- Sales Rank: #1073850 in Books
- Brand: Brand: LexisNexis
- Published on: 2011-05-24
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: .0" h x .0" w x .0" l, .0 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- Used Book in Good Condition
About the Author
Raj Bhala is a Rice Distinguished Professor at the University of Kansas School of Law.
Most helpful customer reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful.
Good, but with notable problems
By W. Logan
Prof. Bhala's text on Islamic law is good, but it has definite problems. I am giving it 4 stars because at this time, there is no other similarly convenient and readily available text for the U.S. legal market. If a better alternative were available, I would have rated this book as 3 stars.
Part of the problem with this particular text is that it suffers from trying to be "all things to all men"; if there were other general books on Islamic law readily available in the U.S. legal market, the publisher and author would likely have chosen a particular niche for this one. The "Understanding" series by LexisNexis is a series of books intended as law school study aids; their comprehensiveness was more than a Nutshell but less than a Hornbook. Bhala's text is over 1400 pages (!), putting it well beyond the category of study aids. According to Bhala, this book in the study aid category can serve not only as a resource for practitioners, but as a textbook--and not only for classes on Islamic law, but also comparative law. Readers familiar with U.S. legal publishing may now appreciate the category confusion posed by this book.
The novel feature of this book is that it is not a simple presentation of Islamic law, but that it is written with a comparative perspective. The author references discussions of Islamic law with perspectives from American law and the teachings of the Catholic Church. The use of Western sources as comparison will doubtless interest readers and help them better appreciate the pluses and minuses of both Islamic and American/Western laws. Moreover, looking at Catholic teachings gives the perspective of another religious system. However, this leads to some odd notes in the text.
The author's apparent lack of formal training in Islamic law caused me to wonder to what extent he truly comprehends Islamic law. It may have been worthwhile to have coauthored this book with someone formally trained in Islamic law.
Moreover, while Bhala clearly discloses to the reader that he is a Catholic and not a Muslim, his religious faith inappropriately intrudes into the text at times. I was first struck by this when he discussed Islamic teaching on euthanasia. After giving a précis of Catholic condemnation of euthanasia, he ends with an a description of the last days of Pope John Paul II, describing him as a moral exemplar of this teaching. This comes uncomfortably close to using a legal treatise for religious witness. Another example is in the book's section on "Family Law and Children". After presenting Islamic teaching on contraception, his presentation of Catholic teaching on contraception smacks more of apologia than explication.
The book should be longer in some areas. Part of this may be due to the first third of the book being taken up with the history of Islam. U.S. law students taking a class on Islamic law may well be unfamiliar with Islam's history and development, but this material might be more appropriate for a separate book. Almost a third of the book is taken up with commercial law. This may reflect an intended audience of students and lawyers focused on international trade, but it leads to short coverage in other areas. For instance, the chapter on wills and trusts weirdly includes a section on euthanasia. Was this supposed to be part of an intended chapter on biomedical issues or living wills? Also, the subject of torts is relegated to one chapter in the five-chapter section on "Criminal Law". Not only will this arrangement be confusing to the book's intended audience of American lawyers and law students, it makes one wonder if Islamic law really has such a shallow treatment of non-criminal wrongs.
The index is inadequate. For a treatise, the number of entries and cross-references are both lacking. For instance, I tried to look for "Adoption" in the index, but that index heading doesn't exist. The index heading "Family Law" has as its entry "Marriage and divorce . . . 33.01[D], [E], [F]". Those entries in the text deal with the importance of family law in Islamic law, the categories of people in Islamic family law, and incongruities in Islamic family law. The index heading "Children" does not exist, but I did see the heading "Child-Rearing" which has the cross-reference "(See MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE)". When I went to the index heading "Marriage and Divorce" there was an entry for "Adoption" leading me to section 38.04 of the text, which does indeed deal with adoption (§ 38.04 Foundling (Lakit) and Adoption).
Despite these criticisms, I am glad to see this book on the market. As the author discusses in his Preface, it is surprising that a book covering the breadth of Islamic law for American lawyers has not appeared before now, and I am curious to see how the author improves and expands upon it in future editions.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
An Exhaustive but Highly Readable Text on Islamic Law
By David A. Gantz
Understanding Islamic Law fills a significant void in current legal literature. The volume is in my experience the only modern fully-comprehensive treatment in English of this vitally important subject. Given the poor understanding in the United States and Europe of Islamic Law and the significance of Islamic legal, cultural and political factors in the post-Iran Hostage Crisis and again after 9/11 world it is surprising ("shocking" to Professor Bhala) that more legal scholars, particularly those with many years of training in Islamic law, haven't sought to address Islamic Law comprehensively in a widely-available volume. Understanding Islamic Law admirably fills this void. While intended primarily for lawyers and law students it is written in a sufficiently clear and lucid manner to make it attractive to any non-lawyer who seeks detailed knowledge and understanding of one of the world's leading religions (and legal systems). Also, unlike many similar textbooks and reference works, Understanding Islamic Law has been priced to be within almost anyone's financial reach, which will likely guarantee it a wide and diverse audience in many English-speaking nations both as a law school course text and a reference work. The work is well-balanced, treating sensitive subjects as terrorism and treatment of women in an objective but nevertheless culturally sensitive manner.
One might also wonder why an American trade lawyer and practicing Catholic (although a teacher of Islamic law for a decade), would decide to undertake a foray into the extreme legal and cultural complexities of Islamic law in order to produce a comprehensive treatment. The reasons according to the Preface are several, including the relative dearth of comparative law courses generally in American law schools, particularly in recent decades and the failure of most of the traditional comparative law texts to address Islamic Law. Perhaps most important in Professor Bhala's view is that despite a number of existing books addressing the religion and history of Islam and specialized subjects such as family law and international law published by both Muslim and non-Muslim scholars,according to Professor Bhala "None of these books is oriented to the needs of the contemporary English-speaking legal classroom or demands of modern legal practice." The volume also has benefitted from Professor Bhala's ability to enlist as reserch assistants several young Islamic law scholars enrolled in the doctoral program at Kansas. I have found the chapters on commercial law and banking law most useful to my work but it has been helpful for me to understand the historical context in which these principles have developed, going back to the historical origins of Islam (which are also comprehensively addressed).
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
A culturally-sensitive, clear and insightful work that preserves objectivity
By John M. Balouziyeh
Professor Raj Bhala's Understanding Islamic Law (Shari`a) (LexisNexis, Understanding Series 2012; US $45 paperback, US $34 ebook; 1,455 pages) is a much-needed, deeply insightful work on Islamic law. The book, recognizing that the Shari`a cannot be understood without first understanding Islam, provides a thorough study on the history, religion and customs of Islam. The book is therefore not a mere treatise outlining the black letter law of the Shari`a, but rather, a scholarly study that explores law, history, religion, political science, international relations, anthropology, sociology and economics, all within a masterful single volume.
Professor Bhala undertakes an ambitious project, one that helps us to better understand the world in which we live, a world where conflict often cannot be divorced from religion or understood without reference to religious context. Among other timely topics, the author discusses the prohibitions on portraying Prophet Muhammad (through film or art) (Chapter 1) and terrorism (Chapter 50) and how these relate to (and indeed contradict) the Qur'an and Islamic law.
Prior to the publication of Understanding Islamic Law, Professor Bhala's reputation was known primarily in the field of international trade law, where he was (and continues to be) globally recognized as a leading expert. That someone of his standing would undertake to write Understanding Islamic Law is unusual in light of scholars' tendencies to ever increasingly specialise in their fields of expertise, rather than branch out into new fields. It is also unusual in that the overwhelming majority of texts on the Shari`a are either written in Arabic or otherwise by Muslim or Arab scholars. Professor Bhala, an American / Canadian Catholic who fits none of these categories, breaks the mold and yet achieves what otherwise might seem impossible, perhaps best expressed in the words of a colleague who is a seasoned international law practitioner and student of comparative law: "a readable study that is remarkable for its cultural sensitivity, essential historical grounding, clarity of explanation and successful attempt to preserve disciplined objectivity in the discussion."
Professor Bhala is able to explain precepts in a clear manner to an audience that may have never encountered the Shari`a or lived in a Muslim country. Being a devoted Catholic allows the author to draw insightful comparisons between Islamic law and Catholic Christianity. For example, he contrasts the place of language in both Christianity and Islam, both claimed by their followers to be universal religions. In Islam, the universal message is spread through a single language elected by God to be divine--Arabic; in Christianity, the message transcends individual languages, as witnessed on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2) (p. xxvi-xxvii).
Bhala goes to great lengths to draw his reader into the world of Islamic law, rather than have the reader draw Islamic law into his own world. For example, Bhala goes a step further than many competing titles by not merely transliterating Arabic words into English, but rather, retaining diacritical signs. This is significant for readers of Arabic, as Bhala's style allows them to easily identify the corresponding Arabic of the transliterated terms without any guesswork.
In the page before the Dedication, Bhala sets the tone for the entire work by quoting Mother Teresa of Calcutta: "We cannot do great things on this Earth, only small things with great love." Throughout the book, Bhala's goal is clear: to write a book with great love that will educate, edify and build understanding. One thing that is certain is that this work will build understanding by speaking across various languages--not only Arabic and English but also the languages of religion, community and culture.
Bhala's tone throughout the book is one of respect and admiration of the Shari`a, a system that like the Catholic canon law, attempts to "organize and systematize for prudential reasons the external aspects of what is essentially not juridical: the will of God in its demands on the will of man" (xl). The Shari`a is thus portrayed as a system that seeks to unify the human law with God's perfect, divine will, through a system rooted in equity.
Professor Bhala does not however shy away from critiquing certain aspects of the Shari`a that depart from this principle of equity, including, for example, Islamic law's evidentiary standard whereby women's testimony is equal to only half of men's testimony. He observes that "women are no more mendacious than men, and perhaps even less so, and the dichotomy seems as much rooted in ignorant chauvinism as based on anything else" (p. 1181).
At the same time, the author goes to great length in rebutting and refuting claims that Islamic law is a force for oppression, terror or injustice. For example, in his last chapter, he identifies each of the Osama bin Laden's arguments justifying terrorism against civilians. Bhala, drawing on a rich array of Islamic traditions, hadith's and the context of the verses quoted by bin Laden to justify his tactics, refutes each of bin Laden's claims and makes a persuasive case against bin Laden's ability to speak for Islam or issue fatwa's.
As with the first edition of any treatise, some errors, as a result of the unyielding constraints of time, made their way into the book. Most of these are minor distractions (e.g., "to or more individuals" rather than "two or more individuals" on page 456), though others are more significant (e.g., p. 471 states that "ownership cannot be acquired by finding a thing" whereas p. 478 states that "the finder of the treasure on un-owned property ... becomes the lawful owner of the treasure"). These errors will inevitably be corrected in what will likely be the book's many future editions.
Even lawyers who practice law in predominantly Muslim countries or studied the Shari`a will in Bhala's treatise be struck by new truths or encounter familiar truths portrayed in a new light. I thus cannot help but recommend Raj Bhala's Understanding Islamic Law with my full endorsement.
John Balouziyeh is a corporate attorney resident in Riyadh, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. A former Fulbright Fellow on Turkish legal reform, he has worked, studied or volunteered in Muslim nations as diverse as Senegal, the Sudan and Syria. He is co-author of A Legal Guide to Investing in Saudi Arabia (Thomson Reuters).
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