Islamic law bibliography

About the bibliography

This initial working bibliography on Islamic law has been produced as part of the work of the Developing an Islamic law curriculum project, to complement the curriculum development process on a range of Islamic law modules. This is the second draft of the bibliography – the first draft was published in May 2007.

The authors would like this development of Islamic law curricula to be a work in progress and an interactive one. Therefore, they very much hope that you will e-mail your requirements and views on how the usefulness of this resource can best be enhanced. They also request colleagues to e-mail them any materials they would like to include in the bibliography – contact the project leader, Shaheen Sardar Ali, on e-mail: s.s.ali@warwick.ac.uk

The bibliography sections are accessible here or via the left-hand menu.

The authors

The bibliography was compiled by:

• Shaheen Sardar Ali – Professor of Law, University of Warwick, and Professor II, University of Oslo, Norway; formerly Professor, Faculty of Law, and Director, Women’s Study Centre, University of Peshawar, Pakistan
• Javaid Rehman – Professor of Law, Brunel University
• Ayesha Shahid – Doctoral Candidate, University of Warwick, and formerly Lecturer, Faculty of Law, University of Peshawar, Pakistan

The authors are grateful to Ayesha Shahid and Mamman Lawan for their excellent research assistance, and acknowledge the support of UKCLE, the Commonwealth Legal Education Association (CLEA) and Warwick School of Law in this project.

Introduction

One of the main issues arising in the teaching and learning process of specialist courses, including Islamic law, is the inadequacy of affordable and accessible resources, including online documentation. This is particularly so in view of the availability of primary sources in Arabic and the deficiency of scholars equally proficient in English and Arabic.

The past decades have been positive in addressing some of the above issues, with an increasing number of research scholars and academics adding valuable English language scholarship to publications on Islamic law. Approaches to the teaching of Islamic law have also attracted a burgeoning field of scholars, who have produced some incisive and thought provoking publications – see below for a selected list.

The experience of participating in courses on Islamic law and materials one is able to access and more importantly, use, is dependent upon the location of the place of teaching and learning. Muslim jurisdictions (countries with a majority Muslim population) tend not to use publications that encourage a critical and analytical approach to the teaching and learning process in Islamic law. Hence the learning process becomes a sterile, repetitive transfer of information from teacher to those being taught, without a meaningful discussion and dialogue.

The present project has, as one of its main objectives, filling in some of these gaps by providing access to a range of perspectives on Islamic law subjects and themes. To this end, the project team is developing a bibliography and other resources for teachers and students of Islamic law. We are also producing a glossary of Arabic terms for non-Arabic speakers to familiarise them with technical terms employed in Islamic law.

Future plans

Web links are useful resources and the present draft contains some addresses, which we will continue to update. It is also intended to sort the bibliography by themes, and we will also include a section on statutes on law reform in the Muslim world. Bearing in mind some copyright restrictions, we will also endeavour to upload articles and chapters in books and other relevant documents.

The journal articles listed below reflect the increasing number of journals in the field as well as the diversity of approaches to Islamic law adopted by scholars. We discovered an emerging multi-disciplinary scholarship engaging with issues and areas of the Islamic legal tradition, including human rights, international law, the Muslim world, Islamic studies, Arabic studies, education, gender, law, ethnicity, race, migration etc.

Web links for different research centres and universities in the UK (and from other parts of the world at a later stage) offering courses on Islamic Law and Islamic Studies are given at the end of this document. In subsequent updates, we intend to include a list of publications by these institutions.

As part of an expanding resource for the study of Islamic law, we are formulating a table containing English translations (by three Islamic scholars), of Quranic verses related to women, children, property rights, purdah, charity etc. We are also in the process of developing a comparative study of the four Sunni schools of thought in tabulated form. Once the compilation of this main bibliography is completed, we will proceed to the development of thematic bibliographies for various topics in the curricula.

Selected list of English language scholarship on Islamic law

• Ali S (2006) Approaches to teaching Islamic law: sharing work in progress (paper presented at the inception workshop of the Developing an Islamic law curriculum project)
• Dzuhayatin S (2005) ‘Mainstreaming human rights in the curriculum of the Faculty of Islamic Law’ Muslim World Journal of Human Rights 2
• Memon N & Ahmed Q (2006) The pedagogical divide: toward an Islamic pedagogy [PDF can be downloaded below]
• Nik Mahmod N (2006) ‘The importance of understanding and teaching Islamic law in Asia’ Asian Journal of Comparative Law 1:230-247 (241)
• Yaakub N (2000) Internet-based learning in Malaysia: Islamic law [PDF can be downloaded below] (paper presented at the 15th BILETA Conference)

Last Modified: 4 June 2010