Badawi Nesrine. Islamic Jurisprudence on the Regulation of Armed Conflict. Text and Context. Brill,2019. � viii, 273 p.. 2019

Sexual slavery, videotaped burnings, and mutilations are images that are be�coming closely connected with the notion ofjihad following the ascendancy of the Islamic State (ISIS). At the same time, calls for limitations on Muslim im�migration to the West, accusations of Islam as a barbaric religion promoting violence, and the conflation of Islam with the practices of militants are gaining popularity. Within this atmosphere, it is becoming increasingly difficult to talk about the Islamic regulation of armed conflict without falling into the trap of either essentialism or apologetics. Nevertheless, the importance of engaging with this branch of law can hardly be overemphasized. This book attempts to make an intervention that avoids those traps by addressing a primary question: how does one understand Islamic jurisprudence on the regulation of armed conflict in its past and present formulations? In order to do so, the book does not offer another summary of the legal tradition as understood by the author. Rather, it argues against the existence of a �true� interpretation of the rules of armed conflict in Islam. It offers a detailed examination of the internal deduc�tive structures of different juristic works on the rules ofjihad and elaborates on different methodological inconsistencies in those works to shed light on the role played by non-textual factors in the development of Islamic jurisprudence and to show that Islamic jurisprudence on armed conflict, like any other legal system, is guided by different sociopolitical considerations. The book deliber�ately avoids providing a summary of Islamic jurisprudence on the regulation of armed conflict because summaries often conflate contexts; they overwrite a narrative of continuity between jurisprudence and its context and assume connections across different juristic works, thereby creating a more definitive and depoliticized account of the tradition.

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Contents

How Do We Study Islamic Legal History?

Indeterminacy in Islamic Jurisprudence on the Regulation of Armed Conflict

Primary Concerns of Classical Jurisprudence

CHAPTER 1 Islamic Jurisprudence in the Expansive Empire

The early 'Abbasid era, precisely until the death of Harhn al-Rashid in 193-809, is often referred to asone of the most glorious periods in Islamic history.

Al-Shaybani: aJurist-Judge

Al-Shtifi and the Exclusionary Project

Conclusion

CHAPTER 2 The Muslim World at the Frontiers: Al-Andalus