Justice & Islamic Law: Mazalim Courts and Legal Reform Summary By Jonathan Brown
In the 2010 film adaptation of Murder on the Orient Express—star-studded and far outshining the novel—Poirot discovers that the train’s passengers had planned and carried out the execution of a man who had murdered a child, but whom the court had somehow failed to convict.
Poirot’s esteem for the rule of law is passionate.
“No, it is medieval!” he says of their actions.
“The rule of law, it must be held high, and if it falls you pick it up and hold it even higher!”
But, as much as he hates it and as much as it leaves him shaken, he cannot deny that they did substantive justice. He lets them go—but also drops his rosary beads in the snow.
It is as if his faith, in the law or in something higher, has been toppled.
The Argument of this Book
The tension between the rule of law and justice is this book’s point of departure.
Like many people of faith in the modern and postmodern world, Muslims live with the mental pangs caused by moments of mismatch between their scripture’s dictates and the learned justice voiced by their conscience.
They take a breath of deeper resolve when a scholar tells them, as al-Saqqāf did, “Well, this is what God and the Prophet command,” hoping their faith can stand another straw laid on its back.
Or they breathe easier when they hear a preacher resolve such a mismatch, as Shaltūt did: “No, that’s not what that verse means…”
