08. November 2013

Introduction Part of the unavoidable challenge of providing an adequate account of the Islamic legal tradition is not just its sheer magnitude and expanse, but that the Islamic legal system continues to be the subject of profound political upheavals in the contemporary age and its legacy is highly contested and grossly understudied at the same time. The Islamic legal system consists of legal institutions, determinations, and practices that span a period of over fourteen hundred years arising...

09. October 2013

SERIES EDITOR'S PREFACE This new volume in the Palgrave Series in Islamic Theology, Law, and History by an accomplished and gifted scholar of the Islamic tradition makes an integral and urgent contribution to the growing body of scholarship focusing on Muslim minorities in the West. One can hardly imagine a topic more germane to the ongoing debates about the future of Muslim minorities in the West and the role that they could play in a world full of paradoxical dualities. On the one hand, we...

23. July 2013

By Khaled Abou El Fadl To engage in jihad means to strive or exert oneself in a struggle to achieve a morally laudable or just aim. For all the sensationalism stirred by the term jihad, this is its indisputable definition in Islamic theology and law. The meaning of jihad is both this straightforward and simple and also this complex and indeterminate. Jihad could be in the form of armed struggle, but (as explained below) the use of violence could also be considered as a most serious and grave...

09. April 2013

The Praetorian State in the Arab Spring[1] Khaled Abou El Fadl First, I have to say that it’s always emotional to come back to the place where you studied. I graduated from Penn Law School and although a lot has changed in the school since then, my years at Penn were amazing. I actually joined UCLA when the dean of UCLA Law School was from Penn as well. So Penn graduates, law school graduates, perhaps there is a future career for you in teaching law. But, moving along from the...

08. January 2013

Series Preface for Law and Tradition in Classical Islamic Thought By Khaled Abou El Fadl This is the first edited collection of scholarly studies to be published in the Palgrave Series in Islamic Theology, Law, and History. It is a volume that I take great pride in introducing to the readers of the series. This single volume includes articles studies by some of the most prominent scholars in the field of Islamic Studies covering a broad array of topics on Islamic theology, philosophy, law, and...

08. January 2013

My article will focus on the interface, interaction, and tensions between the human rights tradition and the Islamic tradition. Both of these traditions—human rights and Islam—make normative demands upon all rational beings, and these demands are articulations of expectations regarding what counts as appropriate or inappropriate conduct in an endless range of contexts and social, economic, and political settings. Both traditions attempt to create normative cultures that define standards of...