ABSTRACT
Western scholarship (even when written by Muslims) has rarely presented Islamic law in such a way as to demonstrate its values rather than the values of the observer. It is legal practice in the Western sense (which admittedly corresponds to the special concerns of some Muslim jurists) that dominates the standard introductions to the subject: Schacht (1950), Linant de Bellefonds (1956) and Fyzee (1964). Certain features of Muslim juristic discourse, those perhaps which are most revealing of its nature and its intentions, are in such works disregarded in favour of a search for practical rules (certainly present, but strangely hard, sometimes, to find).
