Anver Emon‘s (Professor of Law at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law and SHARIAsource senior scholar) new paper Codification and Islamic Law: The Ideology Behind a Tragic Narrative in the Journal of Middle East Law and Governance challenges the now popular argument that Islamic law is near-impossible to formalize as state law. Treating Islamic law as “law” fails, he argues, when folks reduce definitions of sharīʿa and the state to fit a narrow idea of the state: the modern administrative state. Fitting Islamic law into a centralized bureaucratic institution loses the spirit of what is “law” and explains the assumed incompatibility. Read more.
Emon, Anver. “Codification and Islamic Law: The Ideology Behind a Tragic Narrative.” Journal of Middle East Law and Governance 8, no. 2 (2016). 275-309.