SHARIAsource

In this case, Ahmed S. Amro was found to be in contempt of the court's order asking him to return his infant son to his ex-wife, i.e., the mother. Mr. Amro, among others, argued that his son was with his father in Jordan and because his father was a very respected and sophisticated figure in his country, before trying to enforce the court's order, he had to get the opinions of religious scholars on whether or not to return the child. This argument was rejected by the Supreme Court of Iowa, which found the court's order of contempt to be lawful. 

In this case, the New Jersey Superior Court, affirming the decision of the lower court, noted that the mother's allegations of the probability of her ex-husband's taking and abducting their child, whose custody belonged to the mother, to Lebanon was baseless. While the mother's fears were recognized as being "genuine," the Court nevertheless ruled that fear alone, which remained unsubstantiated, was not sufficient to deprive the non-custodial parent of his right to visitation. 

In this case, the Texas Court of Appeals affirmed the lower court's decision denying plaintiff Ace's special appearance. Considering the contract between the parties as a whole, the Court of Appeals ruled that the phrase "court of competent jurisdiction," as stipulated in the contract, which had been agreed to by both parties, referred to a court with proper subject-matter jurisdiction, thus rendering Texan courts competent to adjudicate the matter.

In this case, the defendant, a Muslim male, had sexually abused and then married one of his stepdaughters. While the Court of Appeals of Virginia did not consider the defendant's claim that it was "normal" in "Muslim culture" for men to marry very young women, it determined that the trial court erred in not granting the reopening of the case in light of the new evidence that could result in the defendant losing custody over the other children.

 This is a bill proposed in the Wisconsin legislature that aims to prohibit courts and other adjudicative bodies from considering foreign law in making decisions, provided that the fundamental right of the person against whom foreign law is being applied is violated. 

On March 6, 2017, President Donald J. Trump, issued a second Executive Order which barred, with certain exceptions, entry to the United States of nationals from predominantly Muslim countries. This order barred nationals from six Muslim-majority countries (the original seven except for Iraq), suspended the entry of refugees for 120 days, and reduced the number of refugees who can be admitted to the United States by more than half. The Plaintiffs (the International Refugee Assistance Project; HIAS, Inc., the Middle East Studies Association; Muhammed Meteab; Paul Harrison; Ibrahim Ahmed Mohomed; John Does Nos. 1 & 3; and Jane Doe No. 2) filed a Motion for a Temporary Restraining Order or a Preliminary Injunction. In an opinion by U.S. District Judge Theodore D. Chuang, the United States District Court for the District of Maryland found that the revised Executive Order should be halted because the Plaintiffs are likely to establish that Section 2(c) of the revised Executive Order, which issued the travel ban against citizens of the six designated Muslim-majority countries, violates the Constitution and federal law, specifically the Establishment Clause and Immigration and Nationality Act, 8 U.S.C. §§ 1101-1537 (2012).

The Plaintiffs argued that they had standing to assert the claim that the revised Executive Order violated the Establishment Clause because the “anti-Muslim views” underlying the Executive Order caused them stress and anxiety. The Court acknowledged that for “purposes of an Establishment Clause claim, non-economic, intangible harms to “spiritual, value-laden beliefs” can constitute a particularized injury sufficient to support standing. Suhre v. Haywood Cty., 131 F.3d 1083, 1086 (4th Cir. 1997). Because the harm suffered by the individual Plaintiffs is “fairly traceable to the challenged conduct” in that the revised Executive Order will result in the disfavoring of Islam, the Court found that the Plaintiffs had standing to assert an Establishment Clause claim.

The Court further determined that in order to withstand an Establishment Clause challenge under the Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U.S. 602, 91 S. Ct. 2105, 29 L. Ed. 2d 745 (1971) test, (1) an act must have a secular purpose, (2) “its principal or primary effect must be one that neither advances nor inhibits religion,” and (3) it must not “foster ‘an excessive government entanglement with religion.’” Id. at 612-613 (citations omitted). The Court found that the Plaintiffs presented a convincing case that the revised Executive Order fails the Lemon test because there is substantial, direct evidence that the travel ban was motivated by a desire to ban Muslims as a group from entering the United States. The Plaintiffs primarily relied on statements made by President Trump and his advisors, including a “Statement on Preventing Muslim Immigration” on his campaign website “calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our representatives can figure out what is going on,” an interview with CNN in which Trump professed that he believed “Islam hates us” and that the United States had “allowed this propaganda to spread all through the country that [Islam] is a religion of peace,” and a written statement about the December Berlin attack in which he lamented that people “prepared to celebrate the Christmas holiday” were killed by “ISIS and other Islamic terrorists [who] continually slaughter Christians in their communities and places of worship as part of their global jihad.” Many of the statements about Islam, including references to Islam generally and to jihād, tend to refer to false conceptions of Islamic law or sharīʿa as inherently violent.

Rejecting the argument about neutrality on its face, the Court granted in part and denied in part the Plaintiffs’ motion. The Court issued a preliminary injunction barring enforcement of Section 2(c) of the Executive Order.

Editors’ Note: Many of the statements about Islam, including references to Islam generally and to jihād, tend to refer to false conceptions of Islamic law or sharīʿa as inherently violent.

Discriminatory treatment to African-American Muslim inmates in a Californian correctional facility was deemed lawful under the laws and Constitution of the State of California. The Californian Supreme Court, while taking note of the correctional officials' acknowledgement of discriminatory treatment by refusing to grant Muslim inmates the same privileges to worship, nevertheless deemed this lawful and not violative of petitioners' freedom of religion, as the requests by Muslim inmates were found to be assertive in nature and against the well-functioning of the correctional institution.

This document contains the proposed and approved text of the amendment to the Oklahoman State Constitution in 2010. The amendment differs from many similar legislative endeavors across the United States in that it makes particular reference to "Sharia Law," prohibiting courts from considering a foreign country's laws if that country's legal system includes Sharia. 

On March 6, 2017, President Donald J. Trump, issued a revised Executive Order which barred, with certain exceptions, entry to the United States of nationals from six predominantly Muslim countries, suspended the entry of refugees for 120 days, and reduced the number of refugees who can be admitted to the United States by more than half. The Plaintiffs (the State of Hawai’i and Dr. Ismail Elshikh, an American citizen of Egyptian descent who serves as the Imam of the Muslim Association of Hawai’i) filed a motion for a nationwide temporary restraining order.

The Plaintiffs argued that the revised Executive Order subjected them to discrimination in violation of the Constitution and the Immigration and Nationality Act 8 U.S.C. § 1101 et seq. (INA), because the Executive Order results in “their having to live in a country and in a State where there is the perception that the Government has established a disfavored religion.” The Plaintiffs pointed to public statements by the President and his advisors regarding the implementation of a “Muslim Ban,” which the Plaintiffs contended was the tacit and illegitimate motivation underlying the revised Executive Order. For example, the Plaintiffs pointed to a statement by President Trump that he was “establishing a new vetting measure to keep radical Islamic terrorists out of the United States of America,” and that “We don’t want them here,” and to an interview with President Trump in which he claimed: “Do you know if you were a Christian in Syria it was impossible, at least very tough to get into the United States? If you were a Muslim you could come in, but if you were a Christian, it was almost impossible and the reason that was so unfair, everybody was persecuted in all fairness, but they were chopping off the heads of everybody but more so the Christians. And I thought it was very, very unfair. So we are going to help them.”

The Court found that the State of Hawai’i and Dr. Elshikh both had standing to assert their claims. The Court found that Hawai’i had standing due to the harms to the state’s proprietary interests as operator of public universities and due to preliminary data that indicated the revised Executive Order had suppressed international travel and injured tourism as Hawai’i’s main economic driver. As for Dr. Elshikh’s standing, the Court observed that the injury-in-fact prerequisite can be “particularly elusive” in Establishment Clause cases because plaintiffs do not typically allege an invasion of a physical or economic interest. “Despite that, a plaintiff may nonetheless show an injury that is sufficiently concrete, particularized, and actual to confer standing.” See Catholic League, 624 F.3d at 1048-49; Vasquez v. L.A. County, 487 F.3d 1246, 1250 (9th Cir. 2007). Dr. Elshikh had standing because the revised Executive Order left him and his family, including a wife of Syrian descent and young children who are American citizens, with the knowledge that the United States—their own country—would discriminate against individuals who are the same ethnicity as them, and who hold the same religious beliefs. The Court found that, because the revised Executive Order targeted Muslim citizens due to their religious views and national origin, which may result in these citizens being unable to associate freely with those of other faiths, the injuries are sufficiently personal, concrete, particularized and actual to confer standing in the Establishment Clause context.

As for the Establishment Clause claim, the Court declined the Defendants’ urging to rely on the Executive Order’s religiously neutral text, and instead evaluated the text in conjunction with the historical background of the revised Executive Order. The Court found this historical record “includes significant and unrebutted evidence of religious animus driving the promulgation of the Executive Order and its related predecessor.” The Court included statements made by President Trump including: “I think Islam hates us” and “People were so upset when I used the word Muslim. Oh, you can’t use the word Muslim. Remember this. And I’m okay with that, because I’m talking territory instead of Muslim.”

Because the Court found that the Plaintiffs have shown a “strong likelihood” of succeeding on their claim that the Executive Order violates First Amendment rights under the Constitution, and “it is always in the public interest to prevent the violation of a party’s constitutional rights,” Melendres v. Arpaio, 695 F.3d 990, 1002 (9th Cir. 2012), the Court granted the Plaintiffs’ motion for a temporary restraining order (TRO). In effect, the TRO now blocks the second version of the ban.

Editors’ Note: Many of the statements about Islam, including references to Islam generally and to jihād, tend to refer to false conceptions of Islamic law or sharīʿa as inherently violent.

In its decision, the Turkish Council of State (the highest administrative court in Turkey) has decided that the cabinet decision dated 1934 that converted the Kariye Mosque into a museum was void, as it contravened the waqf deed which had dedicated the building as a mosque open to public use.

This presidential decision signed by Turkey's founding president Kemal Ataturk and his cabinet members converted the Hagia Sophia from a mosque into a museum. The decision cites a letter from the Ministry of Education of the time arguing that said conversion would "make the entire Orient happy" and "gift humanity a new site of knowledge."  The Ministry of Education's letter proposing the conversion into a museum, which the presidential decision cites and upon which it is based, also argues that the mosque has no waqf status–despite being used by Ottoman sultans–due to its status as "an artifact from the Byzantines."  

Following the administrative court decision that annulled the Cabinet Decision of 1945 that converted the Kariye Mosque into a museum, President Erdogan made the decision to transfer the management of the site to the Presidency of Religious Affairs and restore it as a mosque open to worship.

In its unanimous decision, the 10th Chamber of the Council of State, the highest administrative law court of the country, annulled the Cabinet Decision of 1934 converting the Hagia Sophia from a mosque into a museum. The Court reasoned as follows: the companion law to Turkey's secular Civil Code had provided that the old (Islamic) law would apply to waqfs (endowments) established before the new Civil Code came into force. The Hagia Sophia was a mosque, the Court found, that constituted part of Fatih Sultan Mehmed's (aka Mehmed the Conqueror) waqf, and under the applicable law at the time, it was forbidden to alter the status of waqf property via administrative decisions. The Court therefore ruled that the Cabinet Decision of 1934 had unlawfully changed the status of waqf property. The Court struck down the Cabinet Decision of 1934, thus paving the way for restoring Hagia Sophia's status as a mosque for worship.

Amendments to the Muslim Family Laws Ordinance 1961

In December 2021, the National Assembly in Pakistan introduced two amendments in sections 4 and 7 of the Muslim Family Laws Ordinance 1961. Both these amendments relate to Shia school (Fiqh-e-Jafaria). Under the first amendment a childless widow of a Shia husband is given inheritance right in immovable property. The second amendment clarifies the Shia law on talaq (divorce) by providing that the husband must pronounce Arabic words (seegha) in presence of two witnesses to make divorce effective. It further provides that the pronouncement of talaq (divorce) shall not be effective if it is done “jokingly or under anger, intoxication, insanity, duress or coercion of any kind”.

Both amendments provide that in case of dispute, the parties may have a recourse to “a court of competent jurisdiction or by approaching the Mujtahid-e-Alam from the panel maintained by the Council of Islamic Ideology.” Mujtahid-e-Alam is defined as “a juris-consult, religious scholar or doctor of Shia school of thought well versed with Shariah having international repute and of such recognition.” The decision of Mujtahid-e-Alam shall have a status of an award under the Arbitration Act 1940.

Contributed by Zubair Abbasi.

Following the administrative court decision that annulled the Cabinet Decision of 1934 that converted Hagia Sophia into a museum, President Erdogan made the decision to transfer the management of the site to the Presidency of Religious Affairs and restore it as a mosque open to worship.

From imam-us.org:

The Office of His Eminence, Ayatullah Sayyid Ali al-Sistani, communicated a letter to the Secretary-General of the United Nations, His Excellency Mr. António Guterres, regarding the desecration of the Holy Quran in Sweden. A translation of this letter can be found below along with a link to the original.

In the Name of Allah, the Most Beneficent, the Most Merciful

To His Excellency Mr. António Guterres
Secretary-General of the United Nations

Greetings with respect and appreciation,

It has been reported in the media that someone in the Kingdom of Sweden desecrated a copy of the Holy Quran, intending to insult the religion of Islam. 

This disgraceful behavior has occurred more than once in different countries in recent years, but it is noticeable that this time it took place with an official permit from the Swedish police, claiming that it is a requirement of respect for freedom of expression!

However, it is certain that respect for freedom of expression does not justify permitting such a shameful act, which represents a flagrant attack on the sanctity of the beliefs of more than two billion Muslims in the world and creates an environment conducive to the spread of extremist ideas and wrong practices.

The Supreme Religious authority condemns what happened and calls on the United Nations to take effective steps to prevent the recurrence of similar incidents, compel countries to reconsider legislation that allows such occurrences, and call for establishing the values ​​of peaceful coexistence between followers of different religions and intellectual backgrounds based on caring for rights and mutual respect for all. 

The Office of Sayyid al-Sistani, Najaf
10 Dhu al-Hijjah, 1444 A.H
6/29/2023

""Khan v. Hasan, the New York intermediate appellate court held that a mahr agreement under which the husband agreed to pay a sum of money to the wife in the event of divorce was unenforceable under New York state law because the verbal agreement did not conform to New York's laws on matrimonial agreements, which require such agreements to be in writing. The Court further held with regard to the question of applying Islamic law to interpret the alleged agreement: 'It is without question that when courts must touch upon questions of religious concerns, they may not consider religious doctrine.'"

The Malaysian Islamic Development Department (Jakim) recently shared a post on its Facebook account reminding a 2015 fatwā by the Special Meeting of the Fatwa Committee of the National Council for Islamic Religious Affairs Malaysia declaring the use of electronic cigarettes impermissible under Islamic law.