The subject I have chosen for my contribution to this series is ‘Islamic Law in Africa: Problems of Today and Tomorrow’.

As such it is, I fear, bound to be somewhat discursive and even disjointed, and can certainly make no claim to being comprehensive. I shall, moreover, confine myself almost exclusively to British, or formerly British, territories ‘South of the Sahara’; but I shall refer on occasion, chiefly by way of comparison, to North African and the Arab world.