Religious Law and Westernization in the Moslem Near East

Abstract

W ITH THE EXPANSION OF AMERICAN political and economic interests in the Near East, particularly since World War II, the law of the states in that area has acquired practical significance for the American lawyer. Questions of local law are involved in oil concessions, as well as other contracts concluded by American firms with Near Eastern governments and private interests. Moreover, the increasing number of Americans in the states of the Near East has brought with it many other practical legal problems ranging from marriage and divorce to such questions as the law applicable to claims arising from injuries sustained by Americans while in the employ of American firms in the area. This article will attempt to present a brief sketch of the background and development of the law of the states of the Near East with special emphasis on the law of the Arab states, to serve as a basis for the understanding and evaluation of the present-day law of these states. This law is an intricate fabric composed of parts whose origin, history, and philosophical background is entirely dissimilar. Its most important component parts are religious Islamic law and Western, mostly continental European, law. In most of the Moslem countries of the Near East the application of Islamic law is today limited to those fields which are most closely tied to religion: personal status and family relationships, such as marriage and divorce, rights and duties of parents and children, and matters of inheritance. Western law intruded first in fields where the hold of Islamic law was weakest, such as criminal law and commercial law, and then gradually spread to other fields. In order to understand the forces underlying the Near Eastern law of today, it is thus necessary to analyze briefly the various component parts which make up this law and to trace briefly the development of Islamic law and jurisprudence as well as the process of Westernization and its results.