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Dhimmī or muʿāhid (معاهد) is a historical term for non-Muslims living in an Islamic state with legal protection. The word literally means "protected person", referring to the state's obligation under sharia to protect the individual's life, property, as well as freedom of religion, in exchange for loyalty to the state and payment of the jizya tax, in contrast to the zakat, or obligatory alms, paid by the Muslim subjects. Dhimmi were exempt from certain duties assigned specifically to Muslims if they paid the poll tax (jizya) but were otherwise equal under the laws of property, contract, and obligation.
Sharia is a body of religious law that forms part of the Islamic tradition. It is derived from the religious precepts of Islam and is based on the sacred scriptures of Islam, particularly the Quran and the Hadith. In Arabic, the term sharīʿah refers to God's immutable divine law and is contrasted with fiqh, which refers to its human scholarly interpretations. The manner of its application in modern times has been a subject of dispute between Muslim fundamentalists and modernists.
Uniform Civil Code is a proposal in India to formulate and implement personal laws of citizens which apply on all citizens equally regardless of their religion, gender and sexual orientation. Currently, personal laws of various communities are governed by their religious scriptures. Implementation of a uniform civil code across the nation is one of the contentious promises pursued by India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party. It is an important issue regarding secularism in Indian politics and continues to remain disputed by India's political left wing, Muslim groups and other conservative religious groups and sects in defence of sharia and religious customs. Personal laws are distinguished from public law and cover marriage, divorce, inheritance, adoption and maintenance. Meanwhile, article 25-28 of the Indian constitution guarantees religious freedom to Indian citizens and allows religious groups to maintain their own affairs, article 44 of the constitution expects the Indian state to apply directive principles and common law for all Indian citizens while formulating national policies.
A qāḍī is the magistrate or judge of a sharīʿa court, who also exercises extrajudicial functions, such as mediation, guardianship over orphans and minors, and supervision and auditing of public works.
A nationwide judicial system in Iran was first implemented and established by Abdolhossein Teymourtash under Reza Shah, with further changes during the second Pahlavi era.
Islam is the most common religion in Sudan and Muslims have dominated national government institutions since independence in 1956. According to UNDP Sudan, the Muslim population is 97%, including numerous Arab and non-Arab groups. The remaining 3% ascribe to either Christianity or traditional animist religions. Muslims predominate in all but Nuba Mountains region. The vast majority of Muslims in Sudan adhere to Sunni Islam of Maliki school of jurisprudence, deeply influenced with Sufism. There are also some Shia communities in Khartoum, the capital. The most significant divisions occur along the lines of the Sufi brotherhoods. Two popular brotherhoods, the Ansar and the Khatmia, are associated with the opposition Umma and Democratic Unionist Parties respectively. Only the Darfur region is traditionally lacking the presence of Sufi brotherhoods found in the rest of the country.
With the Forty-second Amendment of the Constitution of India enacted in 1976, the Preamble to the Constitution asserted that India is a secular nation. However, the Supreme Court of India in the 1994 case S. R. Bommai v. Union of India established the fact that India was secular since the formation of the republic. The judgement established that there is separation of state and religion. It stated "In matters of State, religion has no place. And if the Constitution requires the State to be secular in thought and action, the same requirement attaches to political parties as well. The Constitution does not recognize, it does not permit, mixing religion and State power. That is the constitutional injunction. None can say otherwise so long as this Constitution governs this country. Politics and religion cannot be mixed. Any State government which pursues nonsecular on policies or nonsecular course of action acts contrary to the constitutional mandate and renders itself amenable to action under Article 356". Furthermore, constitutionally, state-owned educational institutions are prohibited from imparting religious instructions, and Article 27 of the constitution prohibits using tax-payers money for the promotion of any religion.
The Egyptian Civil Code is the primary source of civil law for Egypt.
Abd el-Razzak el-Sanhuri or ‘Abd al-Razzāq al-Sanhūrī was an Egyptian jurist, law professor, judge and politician. He is best remembered as the primary author of the revised Egyptian Civil Code of 1948. Al-Sanhūrī's multi-volume masterwork, Al-Wasīṭ fī sharḥ al-qānūn al-madanī al-jadīd, a comprehensive commentary on the Egyptian Civil Code of 1948 and on civil law more generally, published during 1952-1970, remains in print and is highly regarded in legal and juristic professions throughout the Arab world. Al-Sanhūrī was Minister of Education in the Cabinet of Mahmoud El Nokrashy Pasha from 1945-1946 and again from late 1946 to 1948. He was subsequently appointed as President of the Egyptian Council of State. Al-Sanhūrī's tenure as President of the Council of State lasted until 1954, when he was dismissed by coercion. He has been described as "a personality of unique embroidery, never to reoccur". An avowed advocate of Arab unity, al-Sanhūrī was notably active in the legal and institutional reforms of different Arab countries throughout most of his adult life. He presided over a committee which drafted the Iraqi Civil Code, while at the same time serving as dean of the Baghdad Law School, from 1935 to 1937. He also contributed to a drafting project of a Syrian civil code throughout the early 1940s. Al-Sanhūrī also drafted various public and private laws of Kuwait, Sudan, Libya and Bahrain.
The Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam (CDHRI) is a declaration of the member states of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) first adopted in Cairo, Egypt, on 5 August 1990,, and later revised in 2020 and adopted on 28 November 2020. It provides an overview on the Islamic perspective on human rights. The 1990 version affirms Islamic sharia as its sole source, whereas the 2020 version doesn't specifically invoke sharia. The focus of this article is the 1990 version of the CDHRI.
Islamic revival refers to a revival of the Islamic religion. The revivers are known in Islam as mujaddids.
Secularism—i.e. the separation of religion from civic affairs and the state—has been a controversial concept in Islamic political thought, owing in part to historical factors and in part to the ambiguity of the concept itself. In the Muslim world, the notion has acquired strong negative connotations due to its association with removal of Islamic influences from the legal and political spheres under foreign colonial domination, as well as attempts to restrict public religious expression by some secularist nation states. Thus, secularism has often been perceived as a foreign ideology imposed by invaders and perpetuated by post-colonial ruling elites, and is frequently understood to be equivalent to irreligion or anti-religion.
The law of Libya has historically been influenced by Ottoman, French, Italian, and Egyptian sources. Under the Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, Libya has moved towards a legal system based on sharia, but with various deviations from it.
The legal system of Saudi Arabia is based on Sharia, Islamic law derived from the Qur'an and the Sunnah of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. The sources of Sharia also include Islamic scholarly consensus developed after Muhammad's death. Its interpretation by judges in Saudi Arabia is influenced by the medieval texts of the literalist Hanbali school of Islamic jurisprudence. Uniquely in the Muslim world, Sharia has been adopted by Saudi Arabia in an uncodified form. This, and the lack of judicial precedent, has resulted in considerable uncertainty in the scope and content of the country's laws. The government therefore announced its intention to codify Sharia in 2010, and, in 2018, a sourcebook of legal principles and precedents was published by the Saudi government. Sharia has also been supplemented by regulations issued by royal decree covering modern issues such as intellectual property and corporate law. Nevertheless, Sharia remains the primary source of law, especially in areas such as criminal, family, commercial and contract law, and the Qur'an and the Sunnah are declared to be the country's constitution. In the areas of land and energy law the extensive proprietorial rights of the Saudi state constitute a significant feature.
Since the early Islamic states of the eighth and ninth centuries, Sharia always existed alongside other normative systems.
The Ottoman Empire was governed by different sets of laws during its existence. The Qanun, sultanic law, co-existed with religious law. Legal administration in the Ottoman Empire was part of a larger scheme of balancing central and local authority. Ottoman power revolved crucially around the administration of the rights to land, which gave a space for the local authority develop the needs of the local millet. The jurisdictional complexity of the Ottoman Empire was aimed to permit the integration of culturally and religiously different groups.
A process of secularization in Syria occurred under the French mandate in the 1920s. Syria has been governed by the Arab nationalist Baath Party since 1963. The Baath regime combined Arab Socialism with elements of secular ideology and an authoritarian political system which also incorporated aspects of Islamic law, with different court systems operating for religious minorities. Non-Muslims are forbidden from the role of head of state.
The status of religious freedom in Africa varies from country to country. States can differ based on whether or not they guarantee equal treatment under law for followers of different religions, whether they establish a state religion, the extent to which religious organizations operating within the country are policed, and the extent to which religious law is used as a basis for the country's legal code.
The legal system of Sudan has evolved over time. The legacy of British colonial rule has had a significant impact even after independence. Most of the lawyers and judges were British trained and initially tended to rely on judicial precedent. Soon after independence, however, pressure began to build to change the legal system. By the time Jaafar Nimeiry seized power in 1969, a commission had been working on recommendations for a new system, but he dissolved it and formed another commission dominated by 12 Egyptian jurists. Based on recommendations received from them, Sudan adopted a new civil code that looked much like the Egyptian civil code of 1949. The new system was controversial because it disregarded existing laws and customs and introduced many new legal terms and concepts from Egyptian law without source material to interpret the codes. In 1973 the government repealed these codes and returned the legal system to its pre-1970 common-law status. In 1977 Nimeiry agreed to consider a Muslim Brotherhood demand that the system be based on Islam. He appointed al-Turabi as chairman of a committee to draft new Islamic laws. Nimeiry accepted few of the proposals from this committee. He then established a small, new group in 1983 that developed a “cut-and-paste” version of sharia laws based on practice in other countries. In September 1983, Nimeiry issued several decrees, known as the September Laws, which made sharia the law of the land.
The situation for apostates from Islam varies markedly between Muslim-minority and Muslim-majority regions. In Muslim-minority countries, "any violence against those who abandon Islam is already illegal". But in some Muslim-majority countries, religious violence is "institutionalised", and "hundreds and thousands of closet apostates" live in fear of violence and are compelled to live lives of "extreme duplicity and mental stress."
References
- ↑ "Kuwaiti Constitution". World Intellectual Property Organization. Archived from the original on 2014-08-12.
The Kuwait Legal system is based on civil law jurisdiction; it is derived from Egyptian and French laws.
- ↑ "Doing business in Kuwait". Practical Law. Thomson Reuters. Archived from the original on 2016-03-04. Retrieved 12 March 2016.
- ↑ "Doing Business in Kuwait: A tax and legal guide" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 14 July 2017.
- ↑ Eglin, Darrel R; Rudolph, James D (1985). "Kuwait". In Nyrop, Richard F. (ed.). Persian Gulf states: Country Studies. U.S. Government Printing Office. p. 80 – via Hathai Trust.
- 1 2 Hopkins, Nicholas S.; Ibrahim, Saad Eddin, eds. (1997). Arab Society: Class, Gender, Power, and Development (3rd. ed.). Cairo, Egypt: American University of Cairo. p. 417. ISBN 9789774244049.
- ↑ Induragi, Douglas. "The Legal System of Kuwait: An Evaluation Of Its Applicability". academia.edu. p. 4. Archived from the original on 6 August 2017.
- ↑ Maddex, Robert L. (5 March 2014). Constitutions of the World. Abingdon, UK: Routledge. p. 153. ISBN 978-1-136-21789-0.
- ↑ Liebesny, Herbert J. (1974). The Law of the Near and Middle East: Readings, Cases, and Materials. Albany, New York: State University of New York Press. p. 110. ISBN 978-0-87395-256-9.
- 1 2 "State of Kuwait, Public Administration Country Profile" (PDF). United Nations. September 2004. p. 7. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2014-08-10.
- ↑ "State of Kuwait". London School of Economics. 21 March 2011. Archived from the original on 2014-11-01.
The court system in Kuwait is secular and tries both civil and criminal cases.
- 1 2 3 Price, David (2009). The Development of Intellectual Property Regimes in the Arabian Gulf States: Infidels at the Gates. Abingdon, UK: Routledge-Cavendish. p. 23. ISBN 978-1-134-02496-4.
- ↑ Hafeez, Zeeshan Javed. Islamic Commercial Law and Economic Development. San Fabcisco, California: Heliographica. p. 10. ISBN 978-1-933037-09-7.
- ↑ "Background Note: Kuwait". U.S. State Department. February 2009. Retrieved 25 July 2009.