LONDON, 25 July. - (ANA) - This reference book is a critical analysis of sharia for the 21st century that explores how Muslims worldwide interpret Islamic law to meet the challenges of modern day life. 

 

Sharia law has provoked arguments, questions and debates all across the Western world who consider it a fault-line of major global divisions. It has been labelled divisive by those who are not knowledgeable enough to understand its meaning.

 

The authors Hadi Enayat and Mohamed Keshavjee clearly demonstrate that Sharia is not as rigid a code as exaggerated by Western politicians often unaware of its profound meaning to Muslims be they male or female.

 

Most books on sharia focus on legal history, others on constitutionalism, human rights, gender, finance, or political Islam. However, this work is ambitious in both scope and purpose and attempts to bring these conversations together and examines them as part of a single intellectual landscape. Its purpose is not to provide the final word on any single subject. Rather, it seeks to demonstrate how these debates are interconnected and why they matter for contemporary understandings of sharia law.

 

Well researched and clearly written, this book combines scholarly depth with clarity and serves as a critical introduction to a modernist, progressive and neo-traditionalist perspective on Islamic thought and practice regarding sharia. It also analysis contemporary key debates on Islamic law and modern progressive Islam.

 

Based on arguments provided by modern thinkers and intellectual reformists, this well-researched study reinterpret sharia law amid modern moral, political and technological perspectives.

 

Enayat and Keshavjee are not concerned with the history and structure of the classical legal tradition of sharia law but rather what has become of that tradition in the modern world, and how are contemporary Muslims attempting to interpret, reform, defend, or reimagine it in the twenty-first century.

 

Contemporary debates involve jurists, constitutional theorists, human rights advocates, feminist scholars, state institutions, religious movements, and ordinary believers. Each approaches sharia with different assumptions regarding authority, legitimacy, and interpretation.

 

Contemporary discussions of sharia law can no longer be confined to male juristic discourse alone, and the authors recognise this clearly. 

 

Enayat and Keshavjee focus on the intellectual and ethical debates that shape contemporary understandings of sharia. The two perspectives are, in many respects, complementary. One is concerned primarily with how Islamic law operates in practice, while the other explores how it is debated, contested, and reconstructed in contemporary thought. Taken together, they shed light on different dimensions of the same phenomenon.

 

The authors have identified many of the most important questions confronting contemporary Islamic legal thoughts and have brought them together within a coherent intellectual framework. Future researchers will undoubtedly continue to debate these issues, but they will do so on foundations that this volume has helped to clarify.

 

This valuable work serves as a critical introduction to a modernist, progressive and neo-traditionalist perspective on Islamic thought and practice regarding sharia. This approach reflects the efforts undertaken by Muslims - particularly those in the diaspora - to forge an alternative Muslim modernity based on creative engagement with both Islamic tradition and modern Western forms of knowledge. The book highlights the ground-breaking work of some of these seminal thinkers in various fields of law.

 

The book is divided into thirteen chapters. It first covers what sharia is, its origins and how it developed in real time for Muslim societies. This discussion is then followed by chapters on each of the most challenging subjects of Islamic law in the contemporary world, including: constitutionalism, human rights, gender justice, biomedical ethics, religious freedom, criminal law, economics and finance and property rights. Each of these themes is discussed by the co-authors in light of the state-of-the-art literature available, each topic's individual history, and the current debates and diverse global case studies that relate to each theme. The aim is to highlight that there is no monolithic version of sharia. Rather, sharia is an active set of humanistic principles that inspires Muslims around the world to live according to the ethics of their faith.

 

The book is a collaboration by two experts from different professional backgrounds and aims to take a panoramic view of the subject to appeal to a wide audience. Each chapter can be read 'stand alone' while contributing to the book's broader framework. All together, the chapters challenge misconceptions about sharia and showcase the developments surrounding sharia in the Muslim world and within the Muslim diaspora.

 

This highly recommended book is an authoritative and a valuable contribution to the study of Islamic law trends, reforms and the challenges posed by modern technological advances.

 

This is a must read book for anyone wanting to understand the dynamism of modern Islamic thoughts and values.   - (ANA) -

 

AB/ANA/25 July 2026 - - -