Since Europeans first colonized Arab lands in the 19th century, they have been pressing to have the area's indigenous laws and legal systems accord with Western models. Although most Arab states now have national codes of law that reflect Western influence, fierce internal struggles continue over how to interpret Islamic law, particularly in the areas of gender and family. From different geographical and ideological points across the contemporary Arab world, Haddad and Stowasser demonstrate the range of views on just what Islam's legal heritage in the region should be. For either law or religion classes, Islamic Law and the Challenges of Modernity provides the broad historical overview and particular cases needed to understand this contentious issue.

List of Contributors
Wael B. Hallaq (McGil University), Nathan J. Brown (GWU), Adel Omar Sherif (Supreme Court of Egypt), Jakob Skovgaard-Petersen (University of Copanhagen), Nadia Yakoob (Fragomen, Del Rey, Bernsen & Loewy), Amen Mir (Hale and Dorr), Ann Elizabeth Mayer (University of Pennsylvania), Barbara Stowasser (Georgetown University), Zeinab Abul-Magd (Georgetown University), Lama Abu-Odeh (Georgetown University Law Center), and Amira El-Azhary Sonbol (Georgetown University).

About The Author
Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad is professor of history of Islam and Christian-Muslim relations at the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at the Edmund Walsh School of Foreign Serice at Georgetown University. She has taught Middle East history and Islamic studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst; Hartford Seminary; and Colgate University. She is a past president of the Middle East Studies Association. Haddad's research interest has focused on twentieth-century Islamic thought and Muslims in the West. Her numerous publications include Contemporary Islam and the Challenge of History; Muslim Communities in North America; The Islamic Revival; The Muslims of America; Women, Religion, and Social Change; Muslims on the Americanization Path?; Muslims in the West: From Sojourners to Citizens; and Muslim Minorities in the West: "Visible" and "Invisible."

Barbara Freyer Stowasser (Ph.D., Islamic Studies and Semitic Languages, Universitat Munster) is professor of Arabic in the Department of Arabic at Georgetown University. Since 1993, she has served as director of the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies. She served as the 34th president of the Middle East Studies Association (1998-99). Her publications include a book length study on Women in the Qur'an: Traditions and Interpretation (Oxford University Press, 1994), an edited volume entitled The Islamic Impulse (CCAS, 1987), articles published in American, German, Arabic and Turkish journals and periodicals, and book chapters in collected volumes. CCAS recently published Dr. Stowasser's A Time to Reap: Thoughts on Calendars and Millennialism, an exploration of how Islam, Christianity, and Judaism have historically treated periods of apocalyptic imminence

**Published by Altamira Press in Aprill 2004
**Paperback edition, 274 pages

Table of Contents

• Introduction: Islamic Law and the Challenges of Modernity
  
• Modernization and Legal Reforms in the Arab World
  
  • Can the Shari'a be Restored?
    Wael B. Hallaq (McGil University)
  • Inscribing the Islamic Shari'a in Arab Constitutional Law
    Nathan J. Brown (GWU) and Adel Omar Sherif (Supreme Court of Egypt)
  • A Typology of State Muftis
    Jakob Skovgaard-Petersen (University of Copanhagen)
  • A Contextual Approach to Improving Asylum Law and Practices in the Middle East
    Nadia Yakoob (Fragomen, Del Rey, Bernsen & Loewy) and Amen Mir (Hale and Dorr)
• Legal reforms and the Impact on Women
  
  • Internationalizing the Conversation on Women's Rights: Arab Countries Face the CEDAW Committee
    Ann Elizabeth Mayer (University of Pennsylvania)
  • Tahlil Marriage in Shari'a, Legal Codes, and the Contemporary Fatwa Literature
    Barbara Stowasser and Zeinab Abul-Magd (both at Georgetown University)
  • Egyptian Feminism: Trapped in the Identity Debate
    Lama Abu-Odeh (Georgetown University Law Center)
  • Muslim Women and Legal Reform: The Case of Jordan and Women's Work
    Amira El-Azhary Sonbol (Georgetown University)