A Tale of Two Worlds

Juridical Perspectives Between Islam and the West

This comparative philosophy of law dissertation aims at formulating a new analytical approach to the Islamic legal tradition based on ‘juridical categories’, a concept that facilitates comprehension and understanding of juridical phenomena. Building upon legal comparativism and legal pluralism, this doctoral project intends to avoid bias caused by universalizing Western categories when analyzing foreign juridical notions, which inevitably results in the miscomprehension of non-Western ideas and institutions. Unlike existing literature, this project will not focus on substantive comparisons between normative contents, but on the ‘juridical perspectives’ that helped to shape the Islamic and Western legal orders, including the juridical dimension of Islamic fundamentalism.
Predominantly engaging the Department’s ‘Fundamentals’ research axis, Part one represents this project’s primary research outcomes, focusing on the most relevant juridical questions regarding the Islamic and Western legal per­spectives. Part two undertakes a comparative constitutional analysis focused predominantly on Morocco, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, in which theoretical questions will be examined dynamically. While contributing to legal philo­so­phy, this project intends also to develop and define a new interdisciplinary approach, aiming to provide a starting point for novel analyses in research fields such as legal comparativism, legal pluralism, and constitutional law.
Finally, by formulating a new interdisciplinary approach, this project will provide a foundational discussion of a continuously evolving subject that will never be exhaustively explored. As such, it aims at broadening scholarly reflections on the relationship between the West and Islam, eventually placing these concepts within a suitably comprehensive and contextualized framework.