Islamic Law
Exam Question

1. The global community is bound together by a number of factors but the most important is a deep reverence for the law which is believed to be entirely divine and consequently entirely perfect in nature. Of course there are and have always been divisions within Islam, but all genuine Muslims ultimately acknowledge the existence of god and the perfection of his law even if they cannot all agree on how it should be interpreted.

Discuss this quote focusing on factors such as the sources of Islamic law.

2. The judgment of the European court of Human Rights in SAS v. France 2014 is a bad one both in its failure adequately to vindicate the rights of Muslims to manifest their religion in public and also in its failure to appreciate the complexity of the decision which many Muslim women must make as to whether or not to wear any kind of head or face covering veil. Discuss.

3. Whereas, no doubt, it’s possible for violent people to point isolated passages of Islamic law as justification for their actions, the reality is that any complete and contextualized analysis of Sharia demonstrates that it’s in fact entirely opposed to the concept of terrorism.
Do you agree with this proposition? Give reasons for your answer.

4. There will inevitably be a clash between Sharia law and International human law, not because the overarching values contained in the two are inconsistent they are not, but because each claims that it’s it and only it that represents universal truth. Discuss.

5. Discuss the reasons why it’s difficult for a devout Muslim to conduct his or her business affairs in accordance with the Western rather than the Islamic approach to finance and also the mechanisms which have been devised which facilitate investment in accordance with Islamic rules on finance.

6. To what extent is it true to say that the controversies surrounding Islamic blasphemy laws , the UN resolution targeting Defamation of religion and factual events such as the death sentence imposed on Salman Rushdie in 1989 , the publication of the Danish cartoons in2005 and attacks on the office of Charlie Hebdo in 2015 all entail a clash between competing fundamentalisms – namely Islamic fundamentalism on the one hand and the fundamentalism of liberal secularism on the other?