The Ashgate Research Companion to Islamic Law

This upper-level Companion provides scholars and postgraduate students with a comprehensive and authoritative guide to current research in the thriving area of Islamic law. A distinguished group of authors provide an overview of their particular specialty, reflect on past and current thinking and also point to directions for future research. The book presents classical Islamic law through a historiographical introduction to and analysis of the Western scholarship. The authors address key debates and provoke new ways of thinking about long-standing issues in this increasingly relevant and popular discipline.The Companion is divided into four parts. The first section offers an introduction to the history of Islamic law as well as a discussion of how Western scholarship and historiography on Islamic law has evolved over time. The second part considers the substance of black letter Islamic law. Substantive issues such as legal status, family law, socio-economic-justice, penal law, constitutional authority and the law of war are all discussed in this section. The third part examines the adaptation of Islamic law in light of colonialism and the modern state as well as the subsequent re-Islamization of national legal systems. The final section focuses on contemporary debates surrounding the role of Islamic law in areas such as finance, the diaspora, modern governance and medical ethics, and the volume concludes by questioning the role of Sharia law as a religious authority in the modern context.By outlining the history of Islamic law through a linear study of research in this area, this collection is unique in its examination of past and present scholarship and the lessons we can draw from this for the future. It introduces scholars and students to the challenges posed by the past, to the magnitude of milestones that have been achieved in reinterpreting and revising established ideas, and ultimately to a thorough conceptual understanding of Islamic Law.