The Contact Point of Customary Law and Islamic Law (Legal History Perspective)

Islamic Law , Customary Law , and Afghan Informal Justice

This report is part of the United States Institute of Peace’s (USIP) ongoing effort to understand the pluralist legal system of Afghanistan. It examines, compares, and contrasts Islamic law with traditional forms of justice in an attempt to elucidate how such rule of law approaches interact as well as provide a fuller understanding of each system to better guide rule of law practice, policy, an...

The Formation of Customary Law

Martyrdom, Suicide, and the Islamic Law of War: A Short Legal History

This Article is concerned with one key aspect of the law of the military jihad: the Islamic concept of martyrdom [shahada or istishhad]. This Article will demonstrate that the current Islamist financing and systematic organization and direction of self-annihilatory acts of violence is only weakly supported, if at all, by the classical sources on martyrdom in Islamic law and jurisprudence. The A...

The Emerging Customary Law of Space

The Political Economy of “Aboriginal Customary Law”

Discussions about aboriginal-non-aboriginal relations in Canada have stressed the need to recognize “aboriginal customary law” in self-government arrangements. It is maintained that many aspects of “native law” differ radically from the legal systems that emerged in European countries, and so imposing Canadian conceptions of law on aboriginal communities is an obstacle to native self-determinat...