Land, Law and Islam

Land, Law and Islam
Author: Hilary Lim
Publisher: Zed Books Ltd.
Total Pages: 247
Release: 2013-07-18
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1848137206

In this pioneering work Siraj Sait and Hilary Lim address Islamic property and land rights, drawing on a range of socio-historical, classical and contemporary resources. They address the significance of Islamic theories of property and Islamic land tenure regimes on the 'webs of tenure' prevalent in the Muslim societies. They consider the possibility of using Islamic legal and human rights systems for the development of inclusive, pro-poor approaches to land rights. They also focus on Muslim women's rights to property and inheritance systems. Engaging with institutions such as the Islamic endowment (waqf) and principles of Islamic microfinance, they test the workability of 'authentic' Islamic proposals. Located in human rights as well as Islamic debates, this study offers a well researched and constructive appraisal of property and land rights in the Muslim world.

Accessions List, South Asia

Accessions List, South Asia
Author: Library of Congress. Library of Congress Office, New Delhi
Publisher:
Total Pages: 1922
Release: 1994
Genre: South Asia
ISBN:

Records publications acquired from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, by the U.S. Library of Congress Offices in New Delhi, India, and Karachi, Pakistan.

State of the World’s Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2016

State of the World’s Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2016
Author: Peter Grant
Publisher: Minority Rights Group
Total Pages: 112
Release: 2016-07-12
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1907919805

The unique cultures of minorities and indigenous peoples worldwide – spanning a wide variety of customs and practices – are under threat. This year’s edition of State of the World’s Minorities and Indigenous Peoples highlights the impact of land dispossession, forced assimilation and other forms of discrimination on the most fundamental aspects of their identity, including language, art, traditional knowledge and spirituality. But while the effects of this attrition can be devastating, minority and indigenous cultures have also been critical in strengthening communities and providing activists with a platform to fight for their rights. As this volume illustrates, ensuring that the cultural freedoms of minorities and indigenous peoples are protected is essential if their other rights are also to be respected.

The Origins and Evolution of Islamic Law

The Origins and Evolution of Islamic Law
Author: Wael B. Hallaq
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 250
Release: 2005
Genre: History
ISBN: 0521803322

The history of Islamic law from pre-Islamic times across three centuries.

The Aga Khan Case

The Aga Khan Case
Author: Teena Purohit
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 248
Release: 2012-10-31
Genre: History
ISBN: 0674071581

An overwhelmingly Arab-centric perspective dominates the West’s understanding of Islam and leads to a view of this religion as exclusively Middle Eastern and monolithic. Teena Purohit presses for a reorientation that would conceptualize Islam instead as a heterogeneous religion that has found a variety of expressions in local contexts throughout history. The story she tells of an Ismaili community in colonial India illustrates how much more complex Muslim identity is, and always has been, than the media would have us believe. The Aga Khan Case focuses on a nineteenth-century court case in Bombay that influenced how religious identity was defined in India and subsequently the British Empire. The case arose when a group of Indians known as the Khojas refused to pay tithes to the Aga Khan, a Persian nobleman and hereditary spiritual leader of the Ismailis. The Khojas abided by both Hindu and Muslim customs and did not identify with a single religion prior to the court’s ruling in 1866, when the judge declared them to be converts to Ismaili Islam beholden to the Aga Khan. In her analysis of the ginans, the religious texts of the Khojas that formed the basis of the judge’s decision, Purohit reveals that the religious practices they describe are not derivations of a Middle Eastern Islam but manifestations of a local vernacular one. Purohit suggests that only when we understand Islam as inseparable from the specific cultural milieus in which it flourishes do we fully grasp the meaning of this global religion.