This comparative philosophy of law book aims at formulating a new analytical approach to the Islamic legal tradition based on ‘juridical categories’, a concept that facilitates comprehension and understanding of juridical phenomena. Building upon legal comparativism and legal pluralism, this project intends to avoid bias caused by universalizing Western categories when analyzing foreign juridical notions, which inevitably results in the miscomprehension of non-Western ideas and institutions. Unlike existing literature, this project will not focus on substantive comparisons between normative contents, but on the ‘juridical perspectives’ that helped to shape the Islamic and Western legal orders.
The book focuses on the most relevant juridical questions regarding the Islamic and Western legal perspectives, such as the different visions regarding juridical spatiality, the role of human reason and the relationship between law, man and the divinity. While contributing to legal philosophy, this work intends also to develop and define a new interdisciplinary approach, aiming to provide a starting point for novel analyses in research fields such as legal comparativism, legal pluralism, and constitutional law. Finally, by formulating a new interdisciplinary approach, it will provide a foundational discussion of a continuously evolving subject that will never be exhaustively explored. As such, it aims at broadening scholarly reflections on the relationship between the West and Islam, eventually placing these concepts within a suitably comprehensive and contextualized framework.
01. A global space for a global challenge
02. Avoiding universalization and defining a new approach: legal categories
03. Methodology of research
04. Definitions and terminology
05. Preliminary notions about sharīʿa
01. The State and the ummah: a premise
02. State and dawla
03. Structural elements of the State narrative in the West
04. Universalism in Islam: sharīʿa and ummah
05. Conclusions: transnationalism, universalism, territoriality
01. Premise
02. The khalīfah and the factual idea of Islamic power
03. Authority and law
04. Personification of power in the West
05. Personification of power in Islam
06. Legitimacy and legitimation of power
06.1. External legitimacy
06.2. Internal legitimacy: normative and descriptive dimensions
06.3. Conclusive remarks on legitimation
01. Premise
02. Preliminary considerations about law and creation
03. Law, sharīʿa, qānūn: a question of reason
03.1. Law and reason in the West
03.2. Reason, sharīʿa and fiqh in Islam
03.3. The case of qānūn between Islam and the West
03.4. Conclusive remarks about law, sharīʿa and reason
04. Law and sharīʿa between form and substance
04.1. Form and substance in the West
04.2. Forms and substance in Islam
05. Sources of law and roots of fiqh
01. The terms of the question
02. Sharīʿa as religious law
03. Authority and authorities: between secular command and spiritual guidance
03.1. Spiritual and temporal authorities in the West
03.2. Spiritual and temporal authorities in Islam
03.3. Conclusive remarks
04. Why to punish: a teleological analysis
04.1. Why to punish in the West
04.2. Why to punish in Islam
04.3. Conclusive remarks on punishment
01. Legal orders between imitation and colonization
02. Law and sharīʿa between space and time
03. Law and sharīʿa between morality and coerciveness
03.1. The conceptual extensions of law and sharīʿa
03.2. Bindingness between law and sharīʿa
03.3. Enforceability, law, sharīʿa
04. Sharīʿa, law and constitution
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