Welcome to our August Guest Blogger: M. Zubair Abbasi

It is our pleasure to welcome M. Zubair Abbasi as our August guest blog editor. 

Zubair Abbasi is an Associate Professor at the Shaikh Ahmad Hassan School of Law, Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS). His work focuses on the relationship between sharī‘a and state law in South Asia, Middle East, and Western Europe; Islamic law and jurisprudence (uṣūl al-fiqh) in contemporary world; and comparative law, family law and constitutional law.

He completed his DPhil in Law at Oxford University. In his doctoral thesis titled “Sharī‘a under the English Legal System in British India: Awqāf (Endowments) in the Making of Anglo-Muhammadan Law,” he explored the formation of Muslim Personal Law in British India. His current research project explores the process of judicial Islamization of laws in Pakistan by examining the judgments of the Federal Shariat Court—a special court mandated to exercise Islamic judicial review. This project analyses the sources, methodologies, and methodological tools used by the judges of the Federal Shariat Court and evaluates the impact of Islamization of laws upon the legal system in Pakistan.

His recent publications include a co-authored book, Family Laws in Pakistan (Oxford University Press 2018). He has also published numerous articles in Islamic Law and Society, Journal of Islamic Studies, and Journal of Law, Religion and State. He is the Chief Editor of the LUMS Law Journal and an Editor for the Harvard Law School’s SHARIAsource. He held research fellowships at Oxford University.

At LUMS, he teaches Islamic Jurisprudence, Muslim Personal Law, Contract Law, and Comparative Corporate Law & Governance. He taught Comparative Law, and Islamic Law Reform as a visiting Professor at the American University in Cairo during Spring 2017. He has also been providing legal training to judges at the Punjab Judicial Academy for the past several years.

For more on Prof. Abbasi’s work, visit his faculty page.