SHARIAsource

A Uzbek alien named Yusopov, who had previously been labeled a danger to the security of the nation by the Board of Immigration Appeals, petitioned the court for asylum, withholding of removal, and relief under the Convention Against Torture. The plaintiff argued that he would likely be tortured if returned to his home country of Uzbekistan on religious and political grounds, because he was a practicing Muslim. The Court granted asylum, concluding that the government had not presented evidence to prove that the petitioner posed a national security risk. NB: The Convention Against Torture provisions on withholding removal are codified into U.S. Law at 8 C.F.R. §1206.16 (c). Further obligations noted by the Court are described in the INA at 8 U.S.C. §1231(b)(3)(A), which “prohibits removal of an individual unlawfully in this country if the Attorney General believes that the individual's life or freedom would be threatened in the country of removal on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.”

This Country Profile provides a basic overview of the legal history and institutional structures of the Republic of Uzbekistan (O'zbekiston Respublikasi), based on research produced by GlobaLex at NYU Law School and the Library of Congress. Under Uzbekistan's Constitution, Islamic law (sharīʿa or fiqh) has no legal status. 

Constitution for Uzbekistan in English, published with the permission of Constitute.

In this excerpt from his legal treatise, the Hanafī jurist al-Sarakhsī relays how the imperial grand judge Yaḥyā b. Aktham (d. 242/857) upheld the Ḥanafī position regarding the eligibility of non-Muslims to serve as witnesses. Yaḥyā was said to have permitted non-Muslim testimony against any other non-Muslims. He explained his position, writing that, “consulting the opinions of the earliest jurists, I have found no one forbidding the testimony of the protected people, except two [conflicting] opinions attributed to Rabīʿa.” Further, Sarakhsī relays the Ḥanafī criterion for witness eligibility which developed in a specific hierarchical framework. Muslims were placed above non-Muslims and, within that, locals above outsiders (dhimmī vs. ḥarbī). As Ahmed El Shamsy notes in Justice and Leadership in Early Islamic Courts, this framework equates the right to give testimony with the right to demonstrate legal authority (wilāya) over another.

This source is part of the Online Companion to the book Justice and Leadership in Early Islamic Courts (ILSP/HUP 2017)—a collection of sources and other material used in and related to the book.  

English translation of the 2011 Constitution of Uzbekistan (1992 Constitution of the Republic of Uzbekistan, as amended to 2011).

English translation of the 2014 Constitution of Uzbekistan (1992 Constitution of the Republic of Uzbekistan, as amended to 2014).

English translation of the 1992 Constitution of the Republic of Uzbekistan.

English translation of the 2003 Constitution of Uzbekistan (1992 Constitution of the Republic of Uzbekistan, as amended to 2003).

English translation of the 1993 Constitution of Uzbekistan (1992 Constitution of the Republic of Uzbekistan, as amended to 1993).