Islamic Jurisprudence : An International Perspective

Islamic jurisprudence is a much misunderstood system. This misunderstanding is due to lack of information and to centuries of prejudice. This book seeks to present information, not at present available in a single work, on the pioneering efforts of Islamic jurists to develop a comprehensive body of human rights principles and practice, as well as a corpus of international law principles. The attempt to develop such international law principles long anticipated any similar work in other legal or cultural systems. Human rights doctrine based upon the Qur’an and the Sunnah of the Prophet was expressed in terms which will strike the reader as surpassingly modern. In international law, Islamic treatises anticipated the work of Grotius by eight centuries. This systematic exposition, not attempted before in such detail, will be of interest not only to the Islamic world, but also to philosophers, historians, sociologists and political scientists world-wide. All students of international affairs would likewise benefit from this book.