SOAS Research Online

Abstract

This thesis deals with the general outlook of Islam on international law compared with the Western approach, as formerly represented in Christian doctrines and then in modern international law. The study falls into three parts. Part I tackles a historical background in which we outline the international status of Arabia on the advent of Islam, as a groundwork for better understanding of the Islamic theory. Then we briefly trace the expansion of Islam to elucidate the fact that, historically, the intellectual conquest of Islam was not inseparably the offshot of its military conquest. In a third chapter we try to review the development of the Islamic theory, both in practice and in dogmas, a review which points out the dynamic character of Islamic conceptions to answer the needs of the time. Part I, in fact, clarifies that Islamic theory is rather tolerant and comprehensive as compared with corresponding Christian doctrines. Part II analyses the basis of obligation in Muslim international law, which to us, is a sui generis idea of natural law. It also treats the sources and methods of interpretation, in which respect the differences between Islam and extern theory are due to the religious background which colours the Islamic theory. Part III reviews, in the first chapter, the Muslim classical doctrine. In the second chapter we consider the said doctrine with a view to explaining that it was the product of particular circumstances which are no more valid. The third chapter presents our view about a new interpretation in which we repudiate the classical division of the world into dar al-Islam and dar al-harb together with its main consequences. In fact, our view does not differ basically from the modern standards except in some respects that could contribute to the furtherance of the law of peace in particular and to international law in general.