Islamic Law on Trial: Contesting Colonial Power in British India - Hardcover

by Sohaira Z. M. Siddiqui (Author)

Prior to the East India Company's establishment in India in 1661, Islamic law was widely applied by the Mughal Empire. But as the Company's power grew, it established a court system intended to limit Islamic law. Following the Great Rebellion of 1857, the decentralized Islamic legal system was replaced with a new standardized system. Islamic Law on Trial interrogates the project of juridical colonization and demonstrates that alongside--and despite--the violent displacement of Muslim legal sovereignty, Muslims were able to engage with and even champion Islamic law from inside the colonial judiciary. The outcome of their work was a paradoxical legal terrain that appeared legitimate to both Muslim practitioners and English colonizers. Sohaira Siddiqui challenges long-standing assumptions about Islamic law under British rule, the ways in which colonial power displaced preexisting traditions, and how local Muslim elites navigated the new institutions imposed upon them.

Back Jacket

Of all the studies of Anglo-Muhammadan law, this is the most innovative and illuminating. In shifting the scholarly gaze from how colonial authorities fashioned this law to how Muslim legal practitioners of varied backgrounds engaged with it, Sohaira Siddiqui transforms our understanding of Islamic legal thought and practice under colonial rule.--Muhammad Qasim Zaman, author of Islam in Pakistan: A History

Author Biography

Sohaira Z. M. Siddiqui is Associate Professor of Islamic Studies at Georgetown University in Qatar. She is author of Law and Politics under the Abbasids: An Intellectual Portrait of al-Juwayni and editor of Locating the Sharia.