Editor’s Introduction

Abstract

This special issue of the Journal of Islamic Law started with one question: how do Islamic legal traditions, whether in theory or in practice, inform contemporary debates on racial justice and equality, particularly with the notable rise of mass incarceration? Exploring this question appeared to us critical in several respects. First, race continues to be a major fault line in today’s world—W. E. B. Dubois’s color line persists. Race also continues to affect the way Black people and other people of color—including many Muslims—are treated on a day-to-day basis. Second, the Black Lives Matter moment brought realist approaches to law out of law reviews and into the mainstream conversation through its focus on structural inequalities, mass incarceration, and the policing of communities of color and immigrants in the United States. No matter what law said it did, one had to look at what it actually did to affect (different segments of) society. Third, Muslims, be it in the United States or in the Global South, were not simply subjects or victims of the law or of its systems. We recognized that they are actors shaping the course of the developments in law and society that touch on racial equality, criminal justice, and equality; and they sometimes draw on Islamic traditions in doing so. We sought to examine how.