Islam and Law in Lebanon
Sharia within and without the State

A dynamic account of the sharia in Lebanon as both state law and as personal ethics.

Morgan Clarke (Author)

9781107186316, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 21 June 2018

350 pages
23.5 x 15.6 x 2.3 cm, 0.62 kg

'Morgan Clarke's ethnographically rich account of sharia 'within and outside' the state in Lebanon offers a crucial step forward in articulating current concerns with institutions, ethics, and practices, particularly in the post-Ottoman context, and does so in a particularly clear and generous fashion.' John R. Bowen, author of On British Islam and A New Anthropology of Islam

The modern state of Lebanon, created after the fall of the Ottoman Empire, is home to eighteen officially recognised different religious communities (or sects). Crucially, political office and representation came to be formally shared along confessional lines, and the privileges of power are distributed accordingly. One such key prerogative is exclusivity when it comes to personal status laws: the family legal affairs of each community. In this book, Morgan Clarke offers an authoritative and dynamic account of how the sharia is invoked both with Lebanon's state legal system, as Muslim family law, and outside it, as a framework for an Islamic life and society. By bringing together an in-depth analysis of Lebanon's state-sponsored sharia courts with a look at the wider world of religious instruction, this book highlights the breadth of the sharia and the complexity of the contexts within which it is embedded.

Introduction
Part I. Contextualising Sharia Discourse in Lebanon: 1. Court, community and state – a legal genealogy
2. The consequences for civility
3. Becoming a shaykh
4. Lessons in the mosque
Part II. Sharia within the State: 5. Introducing the sharia courts
6. Marriage before God and the state
7. Bringing a case
8. Rulings and reconciliation
9. The judge as tragic hero
10. The wider world of the sharia
11. Reform and rebellion
Part III. Sharia outside the State: 12. Becoming an ayatollah
13. Making law from the bottom up
14. The limits of authority
Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Islam [HRH], Religion & beliefs [HR]