Islamic law has historically played a role in honoring and pressing for shared commitments to justice and equality under the law on the basis of shared moral principles in mixed Muslim and non-Muslim settings. These values are rooted both in the U.S. Constitution and the moral principles of sharīʿa.
Ibn Ḥārith al-Khushanī recorded the following case as a ḥikāya, an anonymous report: A Christian appeared before the judge Aslam b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, petitioning to be executed. The anecdote offers insight into the historical role of judges during a period of religious dissent in the Umayyad Caliphate, while the author's narrative voice demonstrates past judicial approaches to rationality, humor, and violent penalization.
This text is part of Maribel Fierro, The Judges of al-Andalus, forthcoming.
This commentary discusses the formation of the new sharīʿa court (mahkamah syar’iyah) following the granting of the special region status to the province of Aceh, Indonesia, in 1999. This status gives Aceh the right to implement Islamic law in its region, including Islamic criminal law. The events following the formation of the sharīʿa court exemplify the extent to which the Indonesian justice system has gone to accommodate Aceh’s new system of law. The court of religion in Aceh, which previously could only handle cases involving family disputes, was given the authority to process Islamic criminal cases after the Supreme Court of Indonesia relegated some of the authority of the general court to the sharīʿa court in Aceh.