Islam, Law and Identity

Islam, Law and Identity brings together a range of Muslim and non Muslim scholars in order to focus on recent debates about the nature of sacred and secular law. Law is central to the complex ways in which different Muslim communities and institutions create and re-create their identities around symbols of faith and law. But what is at stake here is not a conflict between common law and Shari'a, but the possibility of opening both forms of law to different constructions of identity. Exploring a more nuanced and sophisticated understanding of the differences and similarities between the secular and the divine, this collection examines the different legacies of monotheism, and their connection with legal traditions.And, in so doing, it takes up the specific conjunctions of traditions that give meaning, and constitute identity, in relation to such terms as Shari'a law, modernity and secularisation.