An incubator for Harvard student work on Islamic law throughout an academic term, under the supervision of Professor Intisar Rabb at Harvard Law School. Students spend a semester doing a dive deep into a subject of their choice based on new or historical cases, fatwās, or other sources of law. They place the content in context, sometimes with the assistance of machines. We post the results.
Islamic finance is under increased scrutiny. Just last week, the Accounting and Auditing Organization for Islamic Finance Institutions (AAOIFI) announced plans to more aggressively develop centralized standards to regulate the … Continue reading Commentary :: The Comparative Costs and Benefits of Models of Islamic Finance Regulation
Professor Intisar Rabb and Iran editor Marzieh Tofighi Darian analyze changes made to statutes defining juvenile crimes and punishment under Iran's new Islamic Penal Code, passed in 2013. The Code … Continue reading Commentary :: Iran’s New Islamic Penal Code: Have International Criticisms Been Effective for Children and Juvenile Offenders?
UAE editor Paul Lee details how Western courts have married Western and Islamic finance without compromising the principle of fair competition. The regulation of Islamic finance has generally been an area to … Continue reading Commentary :: New Trends in Regulating Risk in Islamic Finance
Amidst the tensions raised by Islamic constitutional states as they deal with non-Muslim minorities, worth considering is how Muslim-majority states have resolved the issue in the past. Morocco editor Ari Schriber considers the … Continue reading Commentary :: The Limits of State Religion in the Moroccan ‘Baha’i Affair’
India editor Akhila Kolisetty highlights the Shah Bano case as a marker of constitutional conflict between the Indian government's civil laws and its Muslim citizens' personal status laws. Mohammed Ahmed Khan v. Shah … Continue reading Case Comment :: The Shah Bano Case as Constitutional Conflict in India’s Muslim Family Law
In my last two posts, I identified the loopholes in the new Islamic Penal Code (IPC) that occasionally permit uncodified jurist-defined sharīʿa to override state legislation. In this post, I … Continue reading Between Law and Sharīʿa: Taʿzīrāt Mansūs Sharʿī: A New Concept in the Islamic Penal Code or an Interpretive Error? (Part III)
In a previous post, I explored how a series of struggles by the judiciary and parliament to reinforce the status of the principle of legality in the Iran’s new Islamic … Continue reading Between Law and Sharīʿa: Hudūd and the Principle of Legality (Part II)
Although entrenched in Iran’s Constitution, the principle of legality does not extend very far in Iran’s criminal justice system. I argue that, in Iran, the principle of legality -- widely … Continue reading Between Law and Sharīʿa: The Principle of Legality under Iran’s New Islamic Penal Code (Part I)
Historically, India’s Supreme Court has been hesitant to address the constitutionality of Muslim personal law, including of the practice of polygamy. In this post, however, I argue that the Court’s … Continue reading Opening the Door to Constitutional Challenges to Muslim Personal Law in India, with Polygamy as a Starting Point
The parameters of the right of a husband to divorce his wife unilaterally through the pronunciation of ‘talaq’ three times (“triple talaq” or “unilateral talaq”) has been hotly contested in … Continue reading Unilateral Talaq and the Indian Supreme Court’s Responsiveness to Perceptions within India’s Muslim Community
