Islamic Commercial Law

Definition of Islamic Commercial Law and Contract Law

Islamic Commercial Law

In their broad outline, the fundamental principles of Islamic law in the area of contract and business law do not differ much from their counterparts in Western legal systems. From the nineteenth century, the influence of Western legal systems is largely found in the process of codification, intended to express legal norms in an accessible form, rather than in the substantive content of those norms. The Egyptian civil code ( 1948 ), based on Islamic law, Egyptian court decisions from 1883 , and various modern Western codes served as a model for the new civil codes of Syria ( 1949 ), Iraq ( 1951 ), Libya ( 1953 ), Algeria ( 1975 ), Yemen ( 1979 ), and Kuwait ( 1980 ). There is no consensus regarding the Islamic legal prohibition against riba (interest) on paper money, although conservative Islamists condemn it; the validity of insurance contracts continues to be debated throughout the Muslim world.

Contract Law

The classical law of contracts and obligations adopted the principle of freedom of contract and elaborated various requirements for the formation and validity of contracts. For example, according to the Quran, contracts must be entered into and applied in good faith, preferably be in writing, and avoid riba, the definition of which remains a subject of contention to date. The model contract is the contract of sale (bay). Most Muslim countries codified contract law by the late nineteenth or early twentieth century. The Ottoman Mecelle (Arabic majallah), enacted between 1869 and 1886 , became the model for widespread codification of contract law. The Egyptian civil code ( 1948 ), developed under the guidance of Abd al-Razzaq al-Sanhuri (d. 1971 ), became the model for, among others, the Syrian, Kuwaiti, and Libyan commercial codes. States that have not devised a unified civil code (such as Saudi Arabia) interpret contract law in light of classical jurisprudence. In all Muslim jurisdictions, valid contracts are binding.

Source: The Oxford Dictionary of Islam

Legal Thought and Jurisprudence

Resources

See Also

Further Reading

• Quraishi, A., and Vogel, F. (eds.), The Islamic Marriage Contract (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008)
• Wohlers-Scharf, T., Arab and Islamic Banks: New Business Partners for Developing Countries (Paris: OECD, 1983)
• Pomeranz, F., ‘Business Ethics: The Perspective of Islam’, American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 12(3) (1995), 400–4
• Kymlicka, W., Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995)
• Laqueur, W., and Rubin, B. (eds.), The Human Rights Reader (New York: New American Library, 1979)
• Larsen, L., ‘Islamic Jurisprudence and Transnational Flows’, in Hellum, S., Ali, S. S. and Griffiths, A. (eds.), From Transnational Relations to Transnational Laws: Northern European Laws at the Crossroads (London: Ashgate, 2010), pp. 139–63
• Latief, H., ‘Islamic Charities and Social Activism: Welfare, Dakwah and Politics in Indonesia’, Utrecht University PhD thesis, 2012
• Lau, M., The Role of Islam in the Legal System of Pakistan (Leiden: Nijhoff, 2006)
• Lau, M., ‘Sharia and National Law in Pakistan’, in Otto, J. M. (ed.), Sharia Incorporated: A Comparative Overview of the Legal Systems of Twelve Muslim Countries in the Past and Present (Leiden: Leiden University Press, 2010), 373–432
• Mahmassani, S., ‘International Law in the Light of Islamic Discourse’, Recueil de cours 117 (1996), 201–328
• Mahmood, S., The Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011)
• Malik, M., ‘The Branch on Which We Sit: Multiculturalism, Minority Women and Family Law’, in Diduck, A. and O’Donovan, K. (eds.), Feminist Perspectives on Family Law (Abingdon: Routledge, 2006), pp. 211–34
• Malik, M., Minority Legal Orders in the UK: Minorities, Pluralism and the Law (London: British Academy, 2012)
• Mallat, C., ‘The Debate on Riba and Interest in Twentieth Century Egypt’, in Mallat, C. (ed.), Islamic Law and Finance (London: Graham & Trotman, 1998), pp. 69–88
• Mallat, C. (ed.), Islam and Public Law: Classical and Contemporary Studies (London: Graham & Trotman, 1993)
• Reinhart, A. K., ‘Islamic Law as Islamic Ethics’, Journal of Religious Ethics 11(2) (1983), 186–203
• Serjeant, R. B., ‘The Constitution of Medina’, Islamic Law Quarterly 8 (1964), 3–16
• Serjeant, R. B., ‘The Sunnah Jami’a Pacts with the Yathrib Jews, and the Tahrim of Yathrib: Analysis and Translation of the Documents Comprised in the So-Called “Constitution of Medina”’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 41 (1978), 1–41
• Shachar, A., Multicultural Jurisdictions: Cultural Differences and Women’s Rights (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005)
• Shah-Kazemi, S., Untying the Knot: Muslim Women, Divorce and the Shariah (London: Nuffield, 2001)
• Shahab, R., Muslim Women in Political Power (Lahore: Maqbool Academy, 1993)
• Shaheed, F., ‘Citizenship and the Nuanced Belonging of Women’, in Bennett, J. (ed.), Scratching the Surface: Democracy, Traditions, Gender (Lahore: Heinrich Böll, 2007)
• , pp. 23–37
  Shaheed, F., ‘Engagements of Culture, Customs and Law: Women’s Lives and Activism’, in Shaheed, F., Warraich, S., Balchin, C. and Guzdar, A. (eds.), Shaping Women’s Lives (Lahore: Shirkatgah, 1998), pp. 61–80
• Shahid, A., ‘Post-divorce Maintenance for Muslim Women in Pakistan and Bangladesh: A Comparative Perspective’, International Journal of Law, Policy & the Family 27 (2013), 197–215
• Waldron, J., ‘Constitutionalism: A Skeptical View’, in Christiano, and Christman, (eds.), Contemporary Debates in Political Theory (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009)
• Walker, N., ‘Constitutionalism and the Incompleteness of Democracy: An Iterative Relationship’, Journal of Legal Philosophy 3 (2010), 206–33
• Waltz, S., ‘Universal Human Rights: The Contribution of Muslim States’, Human Rights Quarterly 6(4) (2004), 799–844
• Waluchow, W., ‘Constitutional Interpretation’, in Marmor, A. (ed.), The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Law (New York: Routledge, 2012), pp. 417–33
• Waluchow, W., ‘Constitutionalism’, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2014), pp. 21–9
• Waluchow, W., ‘Constitutions as Living Trees: An Idiot Defends’, Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence 18(2) (2005)