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Griffith-Jones (ed.), “Islam and English Law”

This January, Cambridge University Press will publish Islam and English Law: Rights, Responsibilities and the Place of Shari’a edited by Robin Griffith-Jones (The Temple Church, London). The publisher’s description follows.

Former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams triggered a storm of protest when he suggested that some accommodation between British law and Islam’s shari’a law was ‘inevitable’. His foundational lecture introduced a series of public discussions on Islam and English Law at the Royal Courts of Justice and the Temple Church in London. This volume combines developed versions of these discussions with new contributions. Theologians, lawyers and sociologists look back on developments since the Archbishop spoke and forwards along trajectories opened by the historic lecture. The contributors provide and advocate a forward-looking dialogue, asking how the rights of all citizens are honoured and their responsibilities met. Twenty specialists explore the evolution of English law, the implications of Islam, shari’a and jihad and the principles of the European Convention on Human Rights, family law and freedom of speech. This book is for anyone interested in the interaction between religion and secular society.

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Oliver-Dee, “Muslim Minorities and Citizenship”

This November, Tauris Academic Studies will publish Muslim Minorities and Citizenship:  Authority, Communities and Islamic Law by Sean Oliver-Dee (Associate Research Fellow, London School of Theology). The publisher’s description follows. 

The issues of citizenship, identity, and cohesion have rarely been as vital as they are today. Since the events of 9/11 and subsequent terrorist episodes in Bali, Madrid, London, and elsewhere, focus in this area has centered primarily upon Muslim minority communities living in the West. This book examines the question of citizenship and loyalty, drawing on the historical contexts of Muslim minorities living under British and French imperial rule in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and looks at how shari’a functioned within the context of imperial civil code. It draws important comparisons that are of immense relevance today, and engages with current debates about the compatibility of Islamic law with civil law in non-Islamic societies. Engaging with both Muslim minority and government perspectives, this is important reading for scholars, students, commentators, and policy-makers concerned with the question of Western engagement with its own minorities.

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Agrama, “Questioning Secularism”

This October, the University of Chicago Press will publish Questioning Secularism: Islam, Sovereignty, and the Rule of Law in Modern Egypt by Hussein Ali Agrama (University of Chicago). The publisher’s description follows.

The central question of the Arab Spring—what democracies should look like in the deeply religious countries of the Middle East—has developed into a vigorous debate over these nations’ secular identities. But what, exactly, is secularism? What has the West’s long familiarity with it inevitably obscured? In Questioning Secularism, Hussein Ali Agrama tackles these questions. Focusing on the fatwa councils and family law courts of Egypt just prior to the revolution, he delves deeply into the meaning of secularism itself and the ambiguities that lie at its heart.

Drawing on a precedent-setting case arising from the family law courts —the last courts in Egypt to use Shari‘a law—Agrama shows that secularism is a historical phenomenon that works through a series of paradoxes that it creates. Digging beneath the perceived differences between the West and Middle East, he highlights secularism’s dependence on the law and the problems that arise from it: the necessary involvement of state sovereign power in managing the private spiritual lives of citizens and the irreducible set of legal ambiguities such a relationship creates. Navigating a complex landscape between private and public domains, Questioning Secularism lays important groundwork for understanding the real meaning of secularism as it affects the real freedoms of a citizenry, an understanding of the utmost importance for so many countries that are now urgently facing new political possibilities.