Shari'a Law and Politics in Late Twentieth-Century Egypt
Questions for Seminar:
- How have Islamist groups attempted to Islamize the Egyptian legal system since the 1970s?
- How have reformers and judges reconciled progressive family law reform with the shari'a?
- With respect to article 2 of the Egyptian constitution, how has the phrase "the principles of Islamic shari'a" been understood?
Assigned Reading:
Zubaida, chapter 5.
Jakob Skovgaard-Petersen, Defining Islam for the Egyptian State: Muftis and Fatwas of the Dar al-Ifta (Brill, 1997), chapter 7, “1970-1990: Islamization on the Agenda.”
Kilian Balz, “Submitting Faith to Judicial Scrutiny through the Family Trial: The Abu Zayd Case,” Die Welt des Islams, new series 37 (1997), 135-55.
Oussama Arabi, “The Dawning of the Third Millennium on Sharīʿa: Egypt’s Law No. 1 of 2000, or Women May Divorce at Will,” Arab Law Quarterly 16 (2001), 2-21.
Primary Sources:
Further Reading:
Hussein Ali Agrama, Questioning Secularism: Islam, Sovereignty and the Rule of Law in Modern Egypt (University of Chicago Press, 2011).
Said Amir Arjomand and Nathan Brown, The Rule of Law, Islam and Constitutional Politics in Egypt and Iran (State University of New York Press, 2014).
Nathan Brown, "Egypt: Cacophony and Consensus in the Twenty-First Century," in Shari'a Politics: Islamic Law and Society in the Modern World, ed. Robert Hefner (Indiana UP, 2011), 94-120.
Clark Lombardi, State Law as Islamic Law in Modern Egypt: The Incorporation of the Shari‘a into Egyptian Constitutional Law (Brill, 2006).
Carrie Wickham, The Muslim Brotherhood: Evolution of an Islamist Movement (Princeton UP, 2013).