Adam Possamai, James T. Richardson, and Bryan S. Turner (eds.), The Sociology of Shari’a: Case Studies from around the World

Excerpt

Within any country there are always multiple ways to have a dispute addressed. Local and national courts may have overlapping jurisdictions in which each applies quite different rules, parties may simply avoid the state (through arbitration, mediation, or negotiation), and different religious or ethnic groups may seek recourse in their own forums. The usual scholarly way of referring to such choices is through the notion of ‘legal pluralism’ as opposed to ‘legal centralism,’ a concept that undoubtedly has some descriptive utility even though it has never yielded great theoretical insight. That the editors and authors of the present volume should commence their work by reliance on this idea is understandable, but, perhaps fortunately, it is not the only conceptual tool encountered as one enters the substantive essays. Indeed, readers are alerted in the introduction to two other boundaries that have been placed on the book. First, the contributors focus on those societies “where typically secular law [as opposed to shari’a] is the dominant tradition,” and second, in the overwhelming majority of instances custom is left out of consideration as a source of Islamic law. Together with an emphasis on statutes, rather than unreported case law, these limitations have a distinct effect on the scope of a number of the proffered analyses. …