Islamic Law and Ethics

This course provides an accessible, systematic and interreligious introduction to the study of Islamic law.
Students will obtain a comprehensive overview of the historical development, methodological approaches and substantive scope of this normative system. Attention is given to areas of commonality and divergence with other pre-modern legal systems, especially Cannon law and Talmudic law.
Particular importance is given to the differences with modern bureaucratic legal systems with which most (law) students will be more familiar.

Reflecting its traditional strengths in private law, this course focuses on Islamic family, commercial and contract law, as well as the relatively underdeveloped but important Islamic public law. These also happen to be those areas most relevant to legal practitioners, as courts in Western legal systems often have to resolve private law matters with reference to Islamic legal principles.

This course examines the nature and development of Islamic law from three distinct but related angles:
- as dogma centred around the interpretation of authoritative texts;
- as practice centred around the observation of the way its norms are actually observed by human beings;
- as contingency centred around the recognition of the diverse historical, social and cultural forms it can take.
All three angles will be contrasted to the experience of other major religious and legal traditions.
In line with the course design of the Master’s programme in ”Interreligious Islamic Studies” offered by TEO, this course teaches its subject matter as comparative law (not as a sui generis deontology) and from an interreligious perspective.