Critical Analysis of Law Workshop Series
presents
Anver Emon
Professor & Canada Research Chair in Religion, Pluralism and the Rule of Law
University of Toronto Faculty of Law
Codification and Islamic Law: The Ideology behind a Tragic Narrative
Tuesday, September 27, 2016
12:30 – 2:00
Solarium (Room FA2), Falconer Hall
84 Queen’s Park
This article repositions historigraphically, a particular thesis in Islamic legal studies that characterizes Islamic law as utterly incompatible with codification, and by implication the modern administrative state. This article departs from that argument by situating codification efforts in Muslim majority polities alongside other efforts at codification, specifically 19th century Germany and the United States. The article shows that the thesis of incompatibility relies on a constricted reading of the “Islamic”, an overdetermined conception of the state, and an under-appreciation of the populist-cum-democratic ideology that animates the thesis in the first place. A more fruitful way forward is to interrogate the “state” rather than rarefy it as a theophanic specter. To better appreciate the relationship between Islamic law and codification, the argument suggests, requires that scholars attend to the “state” while resituating the history of the “Islamic” in terms of a history of the “legal”.
Anver M. Emon is a leading scholar of Islamic law who works across multiple legal traditions in both his research and teaching, and brings that scholarly grounding to his consultations for governments, NGOs and legal advocacy groups around the world. Dr. Emon's research focuses on premodern and modern Islamic legal history and theory; premodern modes of governance and adjudication; and the role of Shari'a both inside and outside the Muslim world. His general academic interests include topics in law and religion; legal history; and legal philosophy. He teaches torts, constitutional law, and statutory interpretation, and offers specialized seminars on Islamic legal history, gender and Islamic law, and law and religion. The recipient of numerous research grants, he was named as a 2014 Guggenheim Fellow in the field of law. In addition to publishing numerous articles, Emon is the author of Islamic Natural Law Theories (Oxford University Press, 2010), and Religious Pluralism and Islamic Law: Dhimmis and Others in the Empire of Law (Oxford University Press, 2012), as well as the co-editor of Islamic Law and International Human Rights Law: Searching for Common Ground? (Oxford University Press, 2012). He is the founding editor of Middle East Law and Governance: An Interdisciplinary Journal, and series editor of theOxford Islamic Legal Studies Series.
A light lunch will be provided.
For more workshop information, please contact Nadia Gulezko at n.gulezko@utoronto.ca
