Understanding Islamic Law

by Raj Bhala

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 banking and finance, contracts, criminal law, family law, and property. Understanding Islamic Law
• 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.

Genres: Islam

1455 pages, Paperback

First published April 28, 2011

Reviews

[Edgar · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'm sure Professor Raj Bhala took a lot of effort in attempting to write an introductory text on Islamic law geared toward law students. However, the book overall is not useful and might inadvertently create even more confusion about this subject.

The first problem I have with this book is the unnecessary comparisons between Islamic law and the Roman Catholic faith. While I understand that Professor Bhala's background is Catholic, this goes outside the scope of what this work is intended to accomplish. What should be fleshed out more is the comparison between the American legal system and Shariah. Since this book is written for law school students, this makes more sense and also shows some parallels with the system.

My second problem with the book is the use of sources. I would expect a law school professor to use scholarly sources that reflect the subject he is writing about. Using Wikipedia is not my idea of a scholarly source. He cites Wikipedia several times in his book. He also cites from very antiquated, Orientalist studies of Islamic law. Professor Bhala practically undermines his intention of writing a book that will correct the misconceptions about Islamic Law by citing from academics who have been notorious (like Schacht) for Orientalist tendencies and worldviews when writing about Islam and Islamic Law. What is even more disturbing is his use of Islamophobic sources in the book like ibn Warraq and others. There are plenty of scholarly books and writings on Islamic Law that would easily fill the void of these problematic sources.

My third problem with book, or rather the author in this case, is his apparent lack of expertise or specialization on the subject. He is known for comparative law and international law. Although it is claimed in his curriculum vitae that he has expertise in Islamic Law, but this book shows otherwise. For example, his discussion of the four schools of jurisprudence is very scant and shows little about their roles in developing fiqh. His chapter on Usul al Fiqh is very basic and shows very little on how usul al fiqh plays a big role on how the sources are interpreted and how the law is derived.

My fourth problem with his book is lack of substantive information on the specialists of Islamic law and their role in Islamic law (the Qadi, the mufti, the musannif, etc), how legal change works (from fatwa to furu'), the different types of Islamic legal literature (fatawa, mukhtasar, mabsut, sharh, hashiya), erc.

My fifth problem is sections on the history. It is very general and does not fit in the overall use of the book. What I would have preferred is a more directed history on the development of Islamic law , starting with the Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him). Then moving on to the what Wael Hallaq calls the "proto-qadi" to the development of specialists, the mujtahidun in particular who helped develop legal theory, the development of the madhahib, the epistemological crisis brought on by colonialism and the disintegration of shariah being used as system of legal law with the advent of the nation-state system and the Muslim majority countries adopting foreign Western legal codes and finally the attempted resurgence of adopting Islamic law as a legal system with the nation-state and the problems associated with that. That would have been a much more useful historical introduction than what was written in the book.

In the remaining sections of the book where he actually discusses the legal rulings for particular topics, this is too overgeneralized and does not take into account differences among the schools of jurisprudence.

I do commend Professor Bhala for at least attempting to write a "Balanced" book on Shariah for law school students. Writing a textbook for law school is no easy task but I feel he could improve the book more with the suggestions I have made above. Also I am disappointed in Lexis Nexis (who published his first edition) and Carolina Press (who published the second edition) for not adequately having sufficient peer-review of this book from actual law professors or academics who specialize in the topic (Dr. Wael Hallaq, Professor Intisar Rabb, Professor Asifa Quraishi-Landes, Dr. Khaled Abou El Fadl, Dr. Sherman Jackson, Dr. Atif Ahmed, and many others).

[Edith · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author makes unnecessary parallels to Catholicism that’s not always helpful. Otherwise, I quite enjoyed this introduction for Islamic law for readers who are absolute beginners, while more advanced readers can skip through the parts that lay out the background. Something should be said about the structure. As it’s written as part of the LexisNexis series of law school study guides, I found the organization to be superb in giving a comprehensive overview of the substantive areas of law. Sure, at some point the author gives an overly simplistic view of the material, but this goes hand in hand with presenting a clear structure of the law and touch upon all its bases. Interested readers can simply consult other theoretical works if they’d like to zone in on anything in particular, such as Principles of Islamic Jurisprudence