Islamic and Jewish Legal Reasoning


Book Description

By pairing a scholar of Islamic law with a scholar of Jewish law, a unique dynamic is created, and new perspectives are made possible. These new perspectives not only enable an understanding of the other’s legal tradition, but most saliently, they offer new insights into one’s own legal tradition, shedding light on what had previously been assumed to be outside the scope of analytic vision. In the course of this volume, scholars come together to examine such issues as judicial authority, the legal policing of female sexuality, and the status of those who stand outside one’s own tradition. Whether for the pursuit of advanced scholarship, pedagogic innovation in the classroom, or simply a greater appreciation of how to live in a multi-faith, post-secular world, these encounters are richly-stimulating, demonstrating how legal tradition can be used as a common site for developing discussions and opening up diverse approaches to questions about law, politics, and community. Islamic and Jewish Legal Reasoning offers a truly incisive model for considering the good, the right and the legal in our societies today.




Legal Comparability and Cultural Identity


Book Description

Comparativism is not only a means for political change, but also a heuristic tool for the legal historian within explanatory contexts. The comparability of the Islamic and Jewish legal systems in the medieval period is a typical case for comparative legal history repeatedly mentioned both by legal historiographers and by scholars of religious studies. Our aim is to examine the comparability of these legal systems in the light of modern comparative theories and methodologies: What makes these legal traditions comparable? Is it the theological proximity, the factual transplantations or perhaps the jurists' jurisprudential self-understandings? Our test case will be one of the debated topics in legal philosophy at that time - the legitimacy of legal reasoning in interpreting legal sources and analogizing novel cases to known rulings. Our analysis of the attitudes towards this problem and in relation to theological principles and legal theories in the Islamic and Jewish legal context will revalue the applicability of current comparative theories in a pre-modern and non-western scene.




Jurisprudence and Theology


Book Description

The book provides in depth studies of two epistemological aspects of Jewish Law (Halakhah) as the ‘Word of God’ – the question of legal reasoning and the problem of knowing and remembering. - How different are the epistemological concerns of religious-law in comparison to other legal systems? - In what ways are jurisprudential attitudes prescribed and dependent on theological presumptions? - What specifies legal reasoning and legal knowledge in a religious framework? The author outlines the rabbinic jurisprudential thought rooted in Talmudic literature which underwent systemization and enhancement by the Babylonian Geonim and the Andalusian Rabbis up until the twelfth century. The book develops a synoptic view on the growth of rabbinic legal thought against the background of Christian theological motifs on the one hand and Karaite and Islamic systemized jurisprudence on the other hand. It advances a perspective of legal-theology that combines analysis of jurisprudential reflections and theological views within a broad historical and intellectual framework. The book advocates two approaches to the study of the legal history of the Halakhah: comparative jurisprudence and legal-theology, based on the understanding that jurisprudence and theology are indispensable and inseparable pillars of legal praxis.




The Beginnings of Islamic Law


Book Description

This is a major and innovative contribution to our understanding of the historical unfolding of Islamic law. Scrutinizing its historical contexts, Salaymeh proposes that Islamic law is a continuous intermingling of innovation and tradition. The book's interdisciplinary approach provides accessible explanations and translations of complex materials and ideas.




Comparing Religions Through Law


Book Description

Neusner is a very famous and eminent scholar in "50 key Jewish Thinkers" The relationship between Judaism and Islam is topical and controversial Discusses 'promised land' and 'jihad' in religious and political context Unique approach - comparative study of the two religions through the structure of the law. Sonn is a respected Islamist




Mālik and Medina


Book Description

This book studies the legal reasoning of Mālik ibn Anas (d. 179 H./795 C.E.) in the Muwaṭṭa’ and Mudawwana. Although focusing on Mālik, the book presents a broad comparative study of legal reasoning in the first three centuries of Islam. It reexamines the role of considered opinion (ra’y), dissent, and legal ḥadīths and challenges the paradigm that Muslim jurists ultimately concurred on a “four-source” (Qurʾān, sunna, consensus, and analogy) theory of law. Instead, Mālik and Medina emphasizes that the four Sunnī schools of law (madhāhib) emerged during the formative period as distinctive, consistent, yet largely unspoken legal methodologies and persistently maintained their independence and continuity over the next millennium.




Religion and Law


Book Description

The papers presented in this volume were originally presented at a conference entitled "Religion and Law: Middle Eastern Influences on the West," sponsored by the Middle East Center of the University of Utah and the J. Reuben Clark Law School at Brigham Young Univerisity. The conference's aim was to explore the connection between religion, especially biblical religion, and law in the Ancient Middle East and to trace its development into the present. The special status of Islamic law is treated in several articles.




Judging in the Islamic, Jewish and Zoroastrian Legal Traditions


Book Description

This book presents a comparative analysis of the judiciary in the Islamic, Jewish and Zoroastrian legal systems. It compares postulations of legal theory to legal practice in order to show that social practice can diverge significantly from religious and legal principles. It thus provides a greater understanding of the real functions of religion in these legal systems, regardless of the dogmatic positions of the religions themselves. The judiciary is the focus of the study as it is the judge who is obliged to administer to legal texts while having to consider social realities being sometimes at variance with religious ethics and legal rules deriving from them. This book fills a gap in the literature examining Islamic, Jewish and Zoroastrian law and as such will open new possibilities for further studies in the field of comparative law. It will be a valuable resource for those working in the areas of comparative law, law and religion, law and society, and legal anthropology.







Maimonides and the Merchants


Book Description

In Maimonides and the Merchants, Mark R. Cohen reveals the extent of pragmatic revisions to the halakha, or body of Jewish law, introduced by Moses Maimonides in his Mishneh Torah, the comprehensive legal code he compiled in the late twelfth century.