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Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Islam, the law, and the sovereignty of God, Islamic Sharia Laws, NewAgeIslam.com

Islamic Sharia Laws
Islam, the law, and the sovereignty of God
By Mark Gould
Some will criticize even this second argument as presupposing, if only implicitly, the type of liberal constitutionalism found in the modern West. I argue, in contrast, that if we are to label a regime constitutional, the regime must enable a positivist legal system, one where legislation, the formulation of new laws that are accepted as procedurally valid, is both possible and legitimate. While the cultural content of these laws is variable and might well differ in Christian-dominated and Islam-dominated states (or in the umma), the possibility of lawmaking, and not simply law finding, is a universal requisite for a constitutional system. All constitutional regimes constitute mechanisms allowing for reasoned legislation and adjudication, where the procedures regulating them must be legitimate in terms of the legal regime’s constitutional values and the society’s conscience collective, the society’s civil religion, if they are to justify successfully. Simply, constitutions must legitimate the capacity to create new law in a manner akin to the positivist portrait of legislation.

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