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.
By:
Dr. Sohaira Z. M. Siddiqui Imprint: University of California Press Country of Publication: United States Dimensions:
Height: 229mm,
Width: 152mm,
Spine: 20mm
Weight: 544g ISBN:9780520419223 ISBN 10: 0520419227 Pages: 263 Publication Date:15 April 2025 Audience:
College/higher education
,
Further / Higher Education
Format:Hardback Publisher's Status: Active
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.