Posts tagged with "constitutionalism"



01. December 2014
By Khaled Abou El Fadl It is fair to say that no one is exactly sure what defines an Islamic state. There is no question that the Prophet Muhammad founded a city-state in Mecca and Medina and their vicinity. Many Islamic activists imagine that the Prophet's city-state can be transplanted into the context of the nation-state without any substantial difficulty. This, however, is an illusion. The challenges posed by the modern nation-state have led to a wide range of portrayals of the nature and...
24. January 2012
The Centrality of Sharī‘ah to Government and Constitutionalism in Islam Khaled Abou El Fadl* 1. INTRODUCTION Constitutionalism reflects embedded normative values that arise from evolved historical practices that are not easily transplanted outside their natural habitat. In many ways, constitutionalism must be practiced and not theorized.[1] Therefore, it is doubtful whether it is helpful to abstract the doctrines of constitutionalism from their remarkably diverse cultural and social...
15. March 2011
This is the third book in the Palgrave Series on Islamic Law and Theology, and it is a book that I take special pride in introducing. The source of my pride is not only the friendship and intellectual bond that I share with its author but more significantly, it is an awe-inspiring volume from which I learned a great deal about the challenge of constitutionalist governance and the largely unknown efforts by prominent Muslim jurists to wrestle with the role and function of Islamic law in the wake...