Islamic Law in Sudan…

Even before I started contributing to the Islamopedia Initiative while teaching at Harvard, I was a bit of a fatwa fanatic–hooked on collecting fatwas from around the world in a number of languages. When I was studying Islamic law at Columbia, I was focused on the practice of Islamic law in the former Soviet Union. These days, however, I’m as equally preoccupied with Islamic law in Sudan. Shari’a and Islamism in Sudan: Conflict, Law and Social Transformation, the latest book by Carolyn Fleuher-Lobban, is a welcome and helpful resource in trying to map the complex landscape of Islamic jurisprudence in Sudan and South Sudan. Here’s a blurb from the book jacket:

A country known mostly for the international attention paid to its humanitarian crisis and civil conflict, Carolyn Fleuhr-Lobban puts the spotlight on Sudanese society itself, and the impact that the mobilization, manipulation, and then demobilization of Islamic law has had throughout Sudan. She thus offers an unprecedented analysis of the initial policies implemented and the frameworks set in place in order to influence both private and public spheres. She then goes on to demonstrate the pervading impact this has had on family law, including marriage, adoption and divorce laws and procedures, as well as the effects on criminal law and other sectors of Islamic law and society…