Undergraduate Course: Law and Power in the Muslim World (LAWS10289)
Course Outline
| School | School of Law |
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 10 (Year 3 Undergraduate) |
Availability | Available to all students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | This course provides a critical understanding of laws relationship to power and politics in and through the 'Muslim World'. The course introduces diverse critical perspectives that examine the role of law in constructing and challenging global legal hierarchies, particularly as they play out in relation to Muslim contexts and communities. |
| Course description |
This interdisciplinary course explores the intersections of law, power, and politics in and through the Muslim world. The course adopts a critical and reflective understanding of law as a site of power and contestation that constructs, and that is shaped by, the discursive and material realities of the world. It centres decolonial and feminist epistemologies as well as participatory pedagogies to interrogate how knowledge about law and its relationship to the Muslim World is (re)produced and contested. The course begins with two introductory sessions that invite students to reflect on and question existing assumptions and preconceptions about the juridical and spatial parameters of the 'Muslim world'. These sessions unsettle and expand the concept of the Muslim World', exploring its historical, legal, geographic, and political constructions. The next two sessions delve into different legal orders that shape, and that are co-constituted by, the Muslim world. The first focuses on Islamic law, its historical evolution, and the realities of legal pluralism in Muslim-majority contexts. The second critically examines the role of international law as a framework for universal justice, its colonial legacies, and its application and significance in non-Western contexts. Through this, it highlights global power dynamics that are advanced, consolidated, and challenged through legal frameworks. The course then transitions to contemporary issues to examine the role of law in producing global hierarchies as they affect various spaces and subjects of the Muslim world. It examines the legal dimensions of the 'War on Terror', legal constructions of the Muslim 'other' in the West, as well as law's role in creating and challenging intersecting forms of inequality and marginalisation, along lines of gender, race, and class. By taking a global approach to the study of law and shifting the focus beyond Muslim-majority contexts, this part of the course offers an expansive understanding of the Muslim world, disrupting its dominant normative ideological and spatial boundaries. In the final sessions, the course centres on discourses and modes of resistance, examining the Muslim world 'from below'. These sessions will explore the place of law and Islam in revolutionary change and emancipatory visions for justice.
Please note that classes for this course will be jointly taught with Masters level students. Although students at both levels will study the same course materials, assessments will be graded according to the relevant benchmark appropriate to the level of study.
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | None |
Course Delivery Information
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| Academic year 2025/26, Available to all students (SV1)
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Quota: 0 |
| Course Start |
Semester 1 |
Timetable |
Timetable |
| Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
200
(
Seminar/Tutorial Hours 20,
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
176 )
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| Assessment (Further Info) |
Written Exam
0 %,
Coursework
100 %,
Practical Exam
0 %
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| Additional Information (Assessment) |
Reflective essay (30%): This reflective writing task encourages students to engage with the material in various ways. Students are supported in taking an independent and creative approach in developing their argument, while still grounding reflections in the course themes and readings.
Essay (70%): The essay will be up to 4000 words. The essay will consist of a choice of essay questions set by the course organiser, covering different topics taught in the course. This essay will be due by the January submission deadline.
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| Feedback |
Students will have the opportunity to submit a formative assessment (250 words) by the end of week 4, composed of a sample or outline of the reflective writing task. Written feedback on the summative assessments will also be provided. |
| No Exam Information |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of key legal and political issues pertaining to the Muslim world.
- Critically engage with diverse perspectives on the role of law in shaping global power dynamics in relation to Muslim world
- Understand and analyse legal discourses of various actors relating to Muslim contexts
- Describe and contextualise legal issues relevant in the Muslim World.
- Deconstruct common discourses and perceptions around law and politics in the area
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Reading List
Abu-Lughod L, Do Muslim Women Need Saving? (Harvard University Press 2013)
Ahmed L, Women and Gender in Islam: Historical Roots of a Modern Debate (Yale University Press 1992)
Al-Ali Z, Arab Constitutionalism: The Coming Revolution (Cambridge University Press 2021)
Anghie A, Imperialism, Sovereignty, and the Making of International Law (Cambridge University Press 2005)
Aydin C, The Idea of the Muslim World: A Global Intellectual History (Harvard University Press 2017)
Baderin MA, International Human Rights and Islamic Law (Oxford University Press 2005)
Ellis MR and Emon AM, Islamic Law and International Human Rights Law: Searching for Common Ground? (Oxford University Press 2012)
Grote R, Röder TJ and El-Haj AM (eds), Constitutionalism, Human Rights, and Islam after the Arab Spring (Oxford University Press 2016)
Hallaq WB, An Introduction to Islamic Law (Cambridge University Press 2012)
Madhok S, Vernacular Rights Cultures: The Politics of Origins, Human Rights and Gendered Struggles for Justice (Cambridge University Press 2021)
Otto JM and others, Sharia Incorporated: A Comparative Overview of the Legal Systems of Twelve Muslim Countries in Past and Present (Amsterdam University Press 2022)
Said EW, Orientalism (Penguin 2003)
Sultany N, Law and Revolution: Legitimacy and Constitutionalism after the Arab Spring
Welchman L (ed), Women and Muslim Family Laws in Arab States: A Comparative Overview of Textual Development and Advocacy (Amsterdam University Press 2010)
Zubaida S, Law and Power in the Islamic World (I.B. Tauris 2005) |
Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Research and enquiry: students will learn to critically engage with diverse critical perspectives on the relationship between law and power in relation to the Muslim world. They will learn to enquire into the assumptions underpinning dominant legal discourses and perceptions of law and politics in the area.
Personal and intellectual autonomy skills: students will be able to develop their own critical reflection and analytical thinking on key issues and challenges within a safe and dynamic learning environment. Through in-class debates, small group collaborative activities, and creative assessment, students will have the opportunity develop a sense of individual autonomy and collective agency.
Personal effectiveness skills: students will learn to develop and formulate their ideas effectively, and to constructively and meaningfully engage with those of others. Through collaboration in small group discussions, students will develop relational and reflexive ways of learning and co-developing ideas.
Communication skills: students will develop communication skills through small group and plenary discussions. The course will build in a number of classroom activities, such as debates and simulations, that will further develop communication skills needed for professional environments. |
| Keywords | law,power,empire,islam,colonialism,critical approaches,decolonisation,social justice,global power |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Nora Jaber
Tel:
Email: njaber@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Mr Ryan McGuire
Tel: (0131 6)50 2386
Email: Ryan.Mcguire@ed.ac.uk |
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