Intisar Rabb
Harvard Law School

Foreword to the Symposium on Brunei’s New Islamic Criminal Code The Codification of Islamic Criminal Law

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Published: May 29, 2020
DOI: https://doi.org/10.53484/jil.v1.rabb1
Keywords:
Brunei, criminal law, law reform, Southeast Asia, symposium

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Abstract

In this inaugural issue of Harvard Law School’s Journal in Islamic Law, we use the new Forum, designed for scholarly debate on recent developments and scholarship in the field, to feature a Symposium on the passage of a new 'Islamic Criminal Code' in Brunei. This new criminal code has generated extensive international media attention but little close analysis. In this Forum, four scholars offer scholarly essays that examine the contours of this new legislation and the extent to which it intersects with antecedents in Islamic history and with precedents in modern criminal law and procedure, comparatively. With a foreword by Intisar A. Rabb, Mansurah Izzul Mohamed, Dominik M. Müller, and Adnan A. Zulfiqar assess the history, workings, and critiques surrounding Brunei’s new code. Accompanying their essays is the SHARIAsource Online Companion to the Forum on Islamic Criminal Law in Brunei, which provides the text of each law, and of its antecedents, at beta.shariasource.com.

 

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Author Biography

Intisar Rabb, Harvard Law School

Professor Intisar A. Rabb is Professor of Law, Professor of History, and Faculty Director of the Program in Islamic Law at Harvard Law School. She has held appointments as a Susan S. and Kenneth L. Wallach Professor at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, as an Associate Professor at NYU Department of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies and at NYU Law School, and as an Assistant Professor at Boston College Law School. She previously served as a law clerk for Judge Thomas L. Ambro of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, as a Temple Bar Fellow in London with the American Inns of Court, and as a Carnegie Scholar for her work on contemporary Islamic law. She has published on Islamic law in historical and modern contexts, including the monograph, Doubt in Islamic Law (Cambridge University Press 2015), the edited volumes, Justice and Leadership in Early Islamic Courts (with Abigail Balbale, Harvard University Press 2017) and Law and Tradition in Classical Islamic Thought (with Michael Cook et al., Palgrave 2013), and numerous articles on Islamic constitutionalism, on Islamic legal canons, and on the early history of the Qurʾān text. She received a BA from Georgetown University, a JD from Yale Law School, and an MA and PhD from Princeton University. She has conducted research in Egypt, Iran, Syria, and elsewhere.

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