SHARIAsource

In this opinion, addressed to the Official Gazette, the Secretary of the Guardian Council invalidated Article 26 –Note 1 of the Law on the Formation, Duties, and Election of National Islamic Councils 1996. He argued that because Guardian Council does not have any supervisory authority over the decisions of the City Councils (unlike legislative acts), religious minorities could not represent Muslims where majority of residents are Muslims.

The sharīʿa states vary widely as to hisbah organizations. Some have none at all, some have informal groups not sanctioned by the state, some have official groups organized under the governor’s office, a ministry, or the state Sharia Commission, and some have separate Hisbah Boards or Commissions operating under statutes of their own. These materials document what type of hisbah group each state has (if any), and what the groups are doing. The materials include official reports, relevant statutes, and reports of interviews conducted in the course of fieldwork.

These materials are a part of The Nigeria Papers – a SHARIAsource Special Collection, compiled and edited by Independent Scholar Philip Ostien and others. 

These materials document, state by state, what each of the sharīʿa states is doing in respect of the collection and distribution of zakāt and the management of pious endowments (waqf, pl. awqāf). The materials include early proposals by Sharia Implementation Committees or Councils of Ulama for official zakāt organizations, including the doctrinal background; all statutory materials related to Zakat and Endowment Boards, Commissions, Committees, and Funds; organizational and regulatory materials issued by such bodies; a number of official reports on their activities, including types and amounts of zakāt collected and distributed and endowments established; and other information collected in the course of fieldwork.

These materials are a part of The Nigeria Papers – a SHARIAsource Special Collection, compiled and edited by Independent Scholar Philip Ostien and others. 

As part of their sharīʿa implementation programs, a number of sharīʿa states established new official Councils of Ulama or Sharia Commissions, sometimes with advisory and sometimes with administrative or regulatory functions. Other states established Ministries of Religious Affairs or Offices of Special Advisors to the Governors on Religious Matters, with similar functions. These new bodies were added to older ones, such as the Religious Preaching Boards established in many states in the 1970s and 1980s to regulate Islamic religious preaching in particular. The materials gathered here document all these bodies and their work, including the older Preaching Boards. The materials include all relevant statutes, plus official reports where available, and reports of interviews conducted during fieldwork over a number of years.

These materials are a part of The Nigeria Papers – a SHARIAsource Special Collection, compiled and edited by Independent Scholar Philip Ostien and others. 

These materials include the results relating to gender of a perceptions survey carried out in three sharīʿa states in early 2016, which included questions on hisbah and women, zakat and gender issues, practices harmful to women, and education of girls and women. Also included is documentation of a number of public enlightenment and sensitization programs on women’s rights carried out in the sharīʿa states, and of the effect of sharīʿa implementation on the education of girls and women.

These materials are a part of The Nigeria Papers – a SHARIAsource Special Collection, compiled and edited by Independent Scholar Philip Ostien and others. 

This volume documents Nigeria’s “Settlement of 1960,” under which, as part of the run-up to Nigerian Independence, important changes were made to the laws and legal institutions of the Northern Region. These included abrogation of Islamic criminal law (as well all varieties of “ethnic” criminal law and custom formerly applied) in favor of new Penal and Criminal Procedure Codes applicable in all courts to all persons irrespective of location, ethnicity, or religion; and establishment of a new Sharia Court of Appeal for the Region. The programs of sharīʿa implementation that began in 1999 sought to reverse, for the sharīʿa states, key elements of the 1960 Settlement. The documents published here include the 1958 “Report of the Panel of Jurists” that recommended most of the changes made in 1960, and a number of memorandums written in 1962 for the returning Panel of Jurists, discussing how the changes had been effected and how they were working out. Vol. I begins with an essay on “The Settlement of 1960 and Why It Still Matters Today,” and a 16-page “Who Was Who.”

These materials are a part of The Nigeria Papers – a SHARIAsource Special Collection, compiled and edited by Independent Scholar Philip Ostien and others.

Sharīʿa implementation was effected by the elected governors and Houses of Assembly of the twelve states that undertook it. In most states this was done after wide consultations. The governors appointed committees – usually called “Sharia Implementation Committees” – whose terms of reference were to study what steps should be taken, to consider the constitutionality of the measures proposed, to survey and enlighten public opinion, and to report back to the governor. “White Paper Committees” were then appointed, charged with drafting official statements of the government’s position and program, based on the Sharia Implementation Committee reports. In some states the governors then appointed third committees charged with carrying out the programs laid down in the White Papers; and these third committees, after months of work, sometimes also produced reports on what they had done. These documents – the pre-implementation reports of the initial Sharia Implementation Committees, the White Papers, and the post-implementation reports of the committees charged with implementing the White Papers – are goldmines of information about life in the sharīʿa states in the first years of the 21^st century, about the many problems affecting the people, and about what Muslims hoped to do to improve things. A number of them are reproduced in Vol. II itself, and more are reproduced in the Supplementary Materials also made available here. 

These materials are a part of The Nigeria Papers – a SHARIAsource Special Collection, compiled and edited by Independent Scholar Philip Ostien and others.

A principal aim of sharīʿa implementation was to address the many social ills besetting Nigeria, or, in this case, besetting the Muslim North. This volume documents changes in the law made variously in the sharīʿa states specifically to address corruption, alcoholic drinks, gambling, sexual immoralities, other matters related to women, unedifying media, and miscellaneous other social vices. Two scholarly essays analyze these “Changes in the Law in the Sharia States Aimed at Suppressing Social Vices” and “Sharia Implementation and Female Muslims in Nigeria’s Sharia States.”

These materials are part of The Nigeria Papers – a SHARIAsource Special Collection, compiled and edited by Independent Scholar Philip Ostien and others.

Islamic criminal law had been abrogated in Nigeria’s Northern Region as part of the Settlement of 1960 (see Vol. I). A principal aim of sharīʿa implementation was to reinstate it in the sharīʿa states. This was done through the enactment in most sharīʿa states of Sharia Penal and Criminal Procedure Codes. Vol. IV documents these codes and their sources. Included are (i) complete texts of the “Harmonized” Sharia Penal and Criminal Procedure Codes prepared by the Centre for Islamic Legal Studies at Ahmadu Bello University for consideration by the states, showing section-by-section variations among the codes actually adopted; (ii) tables showing the relationships between the new Sharia Penal and Criminal Procedure Codes and the old Penal and Criminal Procedure Codes of 1960 on which they were largely based; (iii) related laws enacted in some states; and (iv) scholarly essays on both sets of codes. Vol. IV also includes two reports on Islamic criminal procedure by Sokoto State committees; and the Supplementary Materials to Vol. IV include reports by Borno and Kaduna State committees. 

These materials are a part of The Nigeria Papers – a SHARIAsource Special Collection, compiled and edited by Independent Scholar Philip Ostien and others. 

Ṣubḥ al-`a’shā fī sinā’at al-inshā is a late medieval chancery educational book, intending to educate aspiring Mamlūk officials. The text contains several examples of correspondences and contracts that Qalqashandī finds exemplary.  This particular text renders a Sultanic decree of appointment to a Ḥanbalī judge, and outlines various points that the Sultan expects the judge to adjudicate according to his school’s rulings.

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.

This decree established by the Abbasid caliph, al-Ṭāʾiʿ li-Allāh (r. 974-991) establishes the role of the Ṣāḥib al-Maẓālim as different from that of the judge. The Ṣāḥib, or officer, is tasked with investigating complaints of injustice in situations where the executive power must intervene.  In this capacity he can search “for types of evidence that are obscure and concealed.” In contrast, the judge must rely only on “solid and plain evidence.”

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.

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.

A nine-member panel at the Federal Court of Malaysia led by Chief Justice Tengku Maimun ruled in a unanimous decision that Section 66A of the Administration of the Religion of Islam (State of Selangor) Enactment of 2003 was unconstitutional and void as the power of judicial review that it conferred was not a power that the Selangor state legislative assembly was authorized to give. The petition arose out of the High Court consideration of an application for judicial review wherein an organizational petitioner, the SIS Forum (of Malaysia), sought to challenge the validity of a fatwā [advisory Islamic law opinion].The Court stated that it is not concerned with the procedural or substantive validity of the fatwā, and was not asked to determine the courts are authorized to undertake such evaluations in the first place under clause (1A) of Article 121 of Malaysia’s Federal Constitution. The petition concerns only the question whether the Selangor State Legislative Assembly (SSLA) was authorized to enact section 66A of the ARIE 2003, conferring powers of judicial review on syariah (Islamic law) courts. The Court concluded that Selangor, a Malaysian state, cannot grant syariah courts the power to review the rulings of Islamic authorities, which is a power retained exclusively by civil courts. For further context on Islamic law in Malaysia, consult Tamir Moustafa's Constituting Religion: Islam, Liberal Rights, and the Malaysian State (Cambridge University Press, 2018).

Suyūṭī’s (d. 911/1505) al-Ashbāh wa-l-Naẓāʾir is a treatise collecting Shāfiʿī legal canons. It examines the similarities and differences between legal and interpretive outcomes in Islamic law in ways that show how and why one judgment or outcome is distinguished from another, and in the process highlights the substantive and interpretive legal canons that guide those legal outcomes. 

For more, view the full print edition and see The Legal Thought of Jalal al-Din al-Suyuti: Authority and Legacy (Oxford, 2017) by Rebecca Hernandez.

This excerpt is from Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn al-ʿAlāʾī's (d. 761/1359) al-Majmūʿ al-Mudhhab fī Qawāʿid al-Madhhab, which is a two-volume collection of substantive legal canons and interpretive legal canons, and the third-oldest known Shāfiʿī canons collection from the Mamlūk era. Substantive legal canons (qawāʿid fiqhiyya) are short formulas expressing fundamental principles and doctrines of Islamic law, while interpretive legal canons (qawāʿid uṣūliyya) are principles for interpreting textual sources. This excerpt provides the first few pages excerpted from the author's Introduction. 

For more, view the full print edition and read the commentary by Mariam Sheibani on the Islamic Law Blog.