Book: Interpretations of Law and Ethics in Muslim Contexts

The present volume offers over 200 annotated bibliographies of books pertaining to law and ethics in the Muslim world.

This volume brings together some of the many unheard voices of scholars studying law and ethics in languages other than English. It features 200 abstracts with bibliographical details in 3 languages (English, Arabic and Turkish) giving access to information about scholarly publications from Muslim contexts in the fields of law and Shari’ah.

Law within Muslim societies is not uniform; even within Muslim majority regions it can be interpreted differently according to different denominations and legal traditions. As law forms an integral part of normative social practice, reflecting the moral and ethical principles of a society, it is important to highlight the diversity of interpretations to better enable the study of law along with the ethical principles of a community.

The Muslim Civilisations Abstracts (MCA) project has now reached the end of its second stage.  Its  completion  is  the  result  of  a  team  effort   involving numerous colleagues and contributors.  Abstractors, translators, coordinators and editors  from  around  the  world  have  invested  much  of   their time in order to fulfil the objectives of this  project and bring to light another segment of the  Muslim world’s vast literature.

For  the  sake  of  consistency,  this  volume  fol- lows  the  paradigm  set  during  the  pilot  project   on  encyclopaedias  about  Muslim  civilisations; 1 therefore,  in  order  to  avoid  redundancy,  the   technicalities  of  the  project  are  not  repeated   in  this  introduction.  Suffice  it  to  say  that  one   of  the  main  goals  of  this  project  is  to  forge   links  between  scholars  from  different  parts  of   the  world  to  facilitate  further  progress  in  the   social  sciences  and  humanities.  Although  the   focus  of  the  project  is  the  Muslim  world,  we   rely  on  the  collaboration  of  our  European  and   American  colleagues  to  translate  and  promote   the  works  of  their  peers  from  the  East  and  the   South.  Moreover,  the  Muslim  world  transcends   the borders of Muslim-majority states: countries  such  as  India,  Russia  and  China  have  a  strong   and  centuries-old  Muslim  presence.  The  non- Muslim communities living in Muslim-majority  states  are  also  an  integral  part  of  the  Muslim   world.  Therefore,  the  project  has  taken  into   consideration  as  far  as  possible  all  the  regions   and communities implicated, and has sought the  cooperation  and  input  of  all  those  interested  in   Muslim civilisations.

The present volume offers over 200 annotated bibliographies of books pertaining to law and ethics in the Muslim world. This introduction aims to explain the rationale behind the choice of law and ethics as a theme and to clarify the link between these two concepts.

This volume is divided into three sections, by language (English, Turkish and Arabic) each section contains an Introduction followed by the Abstracts.

Aptin Khanbaghi is a senior researcher and team leader for the MCA (Muslim Civilisations Abstracts) project at Aga Khan University. He received his doctorate from Cambridge University in Iranian studies. His academic interests include religious minorities in West Asia and cultural diversity in the Muslim world. Dr Khanbaghi is the author of The Fire, the Star and the Cross: Minority Religions in Medieval and Early Modern Iran (I. B. Tauris, 2006).

Susanne Olsson is Associate Professor at Södertörn University in Stockholm, Sweden, where she is Head of Department for the Study of Religions. She holds a PhD in the History of Religions from Uppsala University, Sweden. She specializes in Islamic Studies and her current research mainly concerns contemporary Islamic ideologies in Egypt and Europe, focusing on questions such as continuity and renewal of Islamic discourses and political aspects of religious interpretations.

Bibliographic Information

Title: Interpretations of Law and Ethics in Muslim Contexts

Author: Aptin Khanbaghi

Publisher: Edinburgh University Press; Mul edition (4 April 2012)

Language: English

Length: 433 pages

ISBN: 978-0748645008

Pub. Date: 4 April 2012

Interpretations of Law and Ethics in Muslim Contexts