This chapter examines the history of the Islamic legal tradition. The notion of written law was firmly implanted in the world by the time of Muhammad. However, written law had not entirely displaced chthonic law in Arabia, so the law to which many of the people of Muhammad had been loyal was a particular variant of that cosmos-loyal ethic that simply tells people of their way to live. Islamic law represents a highly developed and complex legal tradition. There is an ongoing necessity of justification of Muhammad's revelation as source of law, given the weight of social practice it must support.
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Simon Cottee
This chapter explores the relationship between crime and religion, focusing in particular on jihadist religious violence. It is concerned to explain why the relationship between religion and violence is so contested and how it has been understood or, in some cases, explained away. It also addresses the construction of religion in criminology as a ‘prosocial’ social control mechanism, and goes on to sketch out how criminology can engage more fully and fruitfully with religious-based violence.
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This book offers a major new means of conceptualizing law and legal relations across the world. National laws are placed in the broader context of major legal traditions, those of chthonic (or indigenous) law, talmudic law, civil law, Islamic law, common law, Hindu law, and Confucian law. Each tradition is examined in terms of its institutions and substantive law, its founding concepts and methods, its attitude towards the concept of change, and its teaching on relations with other traditions and peoples. Legal traditions are explained in terms of multivalent and non-conflictual forms of logic and thought.
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All books in this flagship series contain carefully selected substantial extracts from key cases, legislation, and academic debate, providing able students with a stand-alone resource. This chapter reviews the use of land (or legal and equitable property rights relating to land) as security for the repayment of money by a borrower to a lender. It also describes charging orders, the use of which increases in the context of the recession. There are four types of security interest: the pledge; the lien; the mortgage; and the charge. The borrower holds the equity of redemption under a classic mortgage by conveyance or sub-demise, but its continued relevance under the predominant legal charge by way of mortgage is questionable. It is observed that the domestic lending market has seen the development of Islamic mortgages, the emergence of shared-ownership schemes, and equity release schemes.
