ABSTRACT
With over a billion adherents in 53 Moslem countries, Islam is a formidable global presence, enjoying a supra-national form of criminal justice which is apparently uninfluenced by European models. In the west, however, where it is considered at all, this tradition is frequently portrayed as ‘authoritarian, medievalist and completely unsuited to the demands of the modern nation state’ (Farrar 2003, p.587). Max Weber adopted the Islamic judge, the qadi, as the archetype of arbitrary and unaccountable authority and the shari’a (Islamic justice) tradition is often represented as intellectually stagnant. One explanation of these critiques lies in the fact that the shari’a, as Divine inspiration, is apparently resistant to developments in jurisprudence and in particular is untouched by the European Enlightenment and its associated doctrines of rights.
