Maurits Berger
Leiden University

Last Sharīʿa Court in Europe On Molla Sali v. Greece (ECHR 2018)

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Published: May 29, 2020
DOI: https://doi.org/10.53484/jil.v1.berger
Keywords:
autonomous rule, civil law, comparative law, Europe, family law, Greece, human rights, interpersonal law, Islamic inheritance law, millet, Muslim minorities, Turkey

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Abstract

On its face, the ruling in Molla Sali v. Greece (European Court of Human Rights 2018) was about choice of forum: in an inheritance dispute, could heirs choose to apply Islamic inheriance law or did a will drawn up in accordance with Greek inheritance law govern a Muslim decedent's estate? The case is significant not so much for its outcome, but because it involved features of two legal systems that are relatively unknown among European and American jurists: interpersonal law and Islamic law in the autonomous region of Greece. The Court's reasoning provides detailed insight into how features of these systems may clash with systems of European civil and common law, particularly in the framework of human rights.

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Author Biography

Maurits Berger, Leiden University

Maurits S. Berger is Professor of Islam and the West at the University of Leiden, holds the Sultan of Oman Chair of Islam and the West at the Leiden University Centre for the Study of Religion, and is a Senior Research Associate with the Clingendael Institute for International Relations in The Hague. His research interests center on Islamic law and political Islam. He has worked as a lawyer in Amsterdam and as a researcher and journalist in Cairo and Damascus. He holds an LLM and an MA from the Utrecht University in Arabic and Islamic Studies and a PhD from the University of Amsterdam on Public Policy and Islamic Law.

Issue
Vol. 1 No. 1 (2020): Spring