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It is generally thought that the rule of religious law regarding marriage and divorce is a concession on the part of the State of Israel to religious interests. It is assumed that the religious population derives great satisfaction from the fact that the State ostensibly bows down to religious law, declining to exercise its jurisdiction on this matter. The non-observant citizen is widely considered the victim of this arrangement. He is forced to take part in a religious ceremony which is foreign to him and, in such an intimate realm of his life, must render himself of the services of a religious authority that represents concepts and symbols which he adamantly rejects. It is true that this sensitivity to "religious coercion" and freedom of conscience is apparent as regards the Jewish population, whereas there is less of a tendency to increase government intervention in the religious and legal autonomy of non-Jewish religious communities. Yet, even regarding the Jewish public, a more cautious examination reveals that the debate as to the institution of civil marriage in Israel transcends the division between those termed "secular" and those known as "religious".

The zoning of land for cemeteries provides an example of locational conflict between local residents and planners. The nature of the conflict is dependent on the differential perceptions held by residents and the degree to which they perceive cemeteries as having a negative influence on the landscape. The planners' guidelines as well as the residents' perceptions are dictated partially by the cultural values governing death and burial. In Judaism, religious law strongly governs both the location of cemeteries and their internal spatial structure. This study of locational conflict in Tel Aviv demonstrates the degree to which Jewish cultural values are brought to bear on the overall issues of planning and land zoning.

I. Relevance of the IssueBy far the majority of articles in the world's leading accounting journalstake as given the culture and religions of the Western world. Articles appearfrom time to time that make distinctions among accounting practices indifferent Western or ex-Commonwealth countries, but in so doing there isusually no need to re-examine whether the basic building blocks of accountingand finance are consistent with the cultures of those countries; that is taken asself-evident. A few authors have pressed further to show that it is inappropriateto impose unmodified Western accounting practices on developingcountries, while many others have illustrated the difficulties in harmonizinginternational accounting standards when they have to be applied to countrieswith different environmental business and social foundations.This line of development is followed in these pages to examine the situationin countries adhering to strict Islamic principles where the culturalbackground to business, and in particular the influence of religious law, arequite different from that in Western countries. It will be shown that differencesbetween the Islamic and Christian religions imply different societal rules ofbusiness behaviour, which further imply differences in operating financialorganisations, as well as in accounting for them and conducting financialanalysis. In fact, the impact of religious principles are so different in these ...

ion, and the notion of justice, with which Islamic law did not come to terms, status laws were widely implemented, and even where they were not followed, they remained influential as the recognized norms. Therefore, these norms must be studied in their application--whether This content downloaded from 157.55.39.35 on Fri, 02 Sep 2016 06:01:44 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms complete or partial--if the extent of their impact on status is to be assessed with any accuracy. A work that shows how essential it is to consider status norms in context is S.D. Goitein, A Mediterranean Society, ii (Berkeley, 1971), where the impact of the jizya imposed on non-Muslim tributaries is assessed with reference to the Jewish community in Fatimid Egypt. Goitein shows how the tax, far from being the relatively innocuous nuisance that one might suppose, was a burden that led to severe hardship and deprivation. Using the same Cairo Geniza records, he discusses the position of slaves in Fatimid Cairo, in his 'Slaves and Slavegirls in the Cairo Geniza', Arabica, ix (1962), pp. 1-22, suggesting there the interplay of legal and socio-economic factors affecting their status. B. The Erosion of Legal Norms Affecting Stratification The legal norms affecting stratification have been seriously affected by the encroachment of socialist and Marxist ideologies. While Islamic law does not envisage or mandate any specific economic order, it accepts economic disparities and is most solicitous of the rights of property owners. Islamic law has in the past confirmed privileges of wealth by reason of the protection it afforded to private property: it did not envisage measures that would level out disparities in wealth or wholesale redistribution of assets and resources in the common interest. The institution that has most often been pointed to by those who maintain that Islam called for a redistribution of wealth that presaged modern socialism is that of zakdt, or the alms tax, regarding which see 'Zakat', in SEI; Aghnides, pp. 207-375. However, it is clear that this one tax could not and was never intended to dismantle the hierarchy of wealth and privilege within the Islamic community. An article the title of which suggests it may be helpful but which I have been unable to consult is R. Arnaldez, 'Sur une interpretation economique et sociale des theories de la 'zakat' en droit musulman', Catalogue de l'Institut des Sciences ,conomiques Appliques, v (1960), pp. 65-86. See also G.H. Bousquet and J. Schacht (eds.), Selected Works of C. Snouck Hurgronje (Leiden, 1959), pp. 132-70. The justifications which Islam affords for inequalities of wealth and for a capitalistic ethos are provocatively discussed in M. Rodinson, Islam et capitalisme, (Paris, 1966), which has appeared in English as Islam and Capitalism, (London, 1974). In adopting socialist or Marxist approaches to property ownership, Middle Eastern governments will inevitably be led to take measures that contravene Islamic law as they move to dismantle an economic hierarchy which Islamic law props up. Highly recommended are the scholarly treatments of the conflict between the Islamic laws on property and private ownership and the exigencies of modern socialist policies in K. Dilger, 'Eigentumsordnung und Sozialismus in den arabischen Staaten', Zeitschrift fuir vergleichende Rechtswissenschaft, lxxv (1975), PP. 171-201 (bibliog.); and K. Dilger, 'Das Recht unter dem Einfluss des Sozialismus in der Volksrepublik Jemen', ibid., pp. 1-38 (bibliog.). Works that have not been available to me but which may be useful include K. Timm, 'Der moderne Islam iiber Privateigentum, soziale Gerechtigkeit, und Nationalisierung', Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift der Humbo ldt-Universitit, Gese Ztschaftsund Sprachwissenschaft iche Reihe, xxi (1972), pp. 201-19; and W. Ule, Bibliographie zu Fragen des Arabischen Sozialismus, des Nationalismus, und des Kommunismus unter dem Gesichtspunkt des Islams (Hamburg, 1967). The fact that the old economic order is sanctioned by religious law has not been overlooked by conservative forces, who have used the weight of Islamic authority to oppose economic change.

One cannot fail to be deeply sympathetic to the sorrowful plight of the agunah (one who is "tied") under Jewish religious law. An agunah is a woman who is no longer living with her husband but who cannot remarry because she has not been di vorced according to religious law. While the extent of the prob lem is not known, there are enough publicly reported incidents to permit the inference that there are many more unpublicized examples.1 Such at least is the view of significant elements of Orthodox (traditional) and Conservative (moderate) Judaism, who have looked to the state to resolve a problem that they can not deal with internally. However meritorious their motives, though, their proposed solutions cannot pass constitutional muster.

The peculiarity of the Druze law of divorce does not lie in the mechanism of dissolution, which is not materially different from that of the Muslim sharī'a, but in its effects: a dissolved marriage cannot be restored; the repudiation of the wife by itself creates an absolute bar to a remarriage between the parties. Article 11 of the Lebanese Druze Law of Personal Status of 1948 (hereinafter referred to as ‘the Lebanese Druze Law’), which was adopted by the Israeli Druze Community in 1961, provides, in conformity with Druze religious law, that a man must not remarry his divorced wife. Unlike Islamic law, Druze law does not distinguish between revocable (raj'ī) divorce, which does not immediately sever the marital bond but permits reinstating the wife during the waiting-period ('idda) by express utterance or significant conduct, and irrevocable (bā'in) divorce, which takes immediate effect; reinstatement in the latter case requires the conclusion of a new marriage with all that this implies (dower, etc.). A Druze divorce is absolute under any circumstances; the wife cannot be reinstated by way of taḥlīl, i.e. an intermediate marriage to another man and divorce from him so as to become again permitted to her first husband; this course is adopted in Islamic law after the third repudiation. Although the Lebanese Druze Law does not say so expressly, it seems that the legislator intended to block the reinstatement of the wife and restoration of the marriage by every possible means. In fact, religious law goes so far as to forbid divorced spouses to meet under the same roof even if separated by many partitions. The ban on taking back a divorced wife dates from the early days of the Druze religion.

What Is The Talmud? The Talmud is a vast body of Jewish religious scholarship spanning almost eight centuries from about 300 BCE to about 500 CE. Composed by scholars living mainly in Palestine and Babylon it is essentially a codification of Jewish religious law, yet its discussions include observations on almost every aspect of human conduct.

The centenary of the Mejelle, the Ottoman Civil Code, is not being commemorated by any jubilations. This is not only because so little of it is left in force, but also, and perhaps mainly, because it has remained much of a mystery right up to the present day.The mystery is due partly to certain initial defects inherent in its preparation. One of these is the ambiguity purposefully introduced into the Mejelle, with the aim of camouflaging its deviations from the Holy Law of Islam which, theoretically, reigned supreme in the Ottoman Empire to its last day. Indeed, true to a long-standing tradition, the assent of the highest religious authority in the Empire, Sheikh-u 'l-Islam, was required before any law could be promulgated. Thus, in the case of the Mejelle too, the said religious authority was associated in its preparation. Once involved in the matter it could no longer shun delicate problems, when the religious law came into conflict with the interests of the State. In order to avoid this dilemma in the Mejelle, its authors applied a new stratagem, that of silent omission.

With the rise of Islam, Arab civilization was given a defined ideological and cultural framework within which it could develop. Islam, as a system of symbols, represents the most significant factor in the explanation of Arab cultural, intellectual, and literary history since the seventh century. Arabic literature was never wholly a religious one, but since the revelation of the Qur'ān, the various activities in the literary system generally occurred within the borders defined by Islam and were guided by a cultural heritage that seemed nearly as sacred as the religious law. Islam and, more specifically, the Qur'ān, was also predominant in consolidating principles that ensured, according to most Arab intellectuals in the twentieth century, that modern Arabic literature could only be a direct extension of the classical literature. The dominance of Islamist discourse in the literary system during the last century was reflected through censorship and banning of books for religious considerations and for the harm they might do to public morality. Nevertheless, Arabic literature witnessed during the second half of the previous century a strong trend towards separation from its strict Islamic moorings in order to follow its course as a completely secularized literature. This trend has found its manifestation in both the interrelations of the literary system with other extra-literary systems as well as on the level of the texts themselves. (The term “Islamist” is used here to refer to the cultural activities and the discourse of the religious circles; conversely, the terms “Muslim” or “Islamic” are applied to general religious and traditional cultural phenomena).

There never was in any Indonesian language a word that had exactly the same meaning as the English word "law", the Dutch and German "recht", the Latin "jus". Now in official modern Indonesian [i.e. modernized, europeanized Malay] the originally Arabic word hukum has been adopted for "law"; hadkim for "judge" and 'ilmu kehakiman 1) for "legal science". So the modern intellectual class of Indonesians as a result of long European influence became at least to a certain extent familiar with the Western distinction between "law" and, say, manners and customs. It may be quite natural to Europeans, heirs to the treasures of Roman law, to make such a distinction, more or less clearly conceived. But it never was and perhaps never will be so plainly marked off by the average Indonesian or by many other peoples in the non-western world. For history made them think along other lines. The sense of justice however and the need of administering it are universal. There always was such an administration of justice in any country, more or less distinct and developed. Dutch scholars who set out to study and describe what was rule of law or justice in the non-Western societies invented and introduced for Indonesia the word "adatrecht" i.e. "adatlaw". This term came into use about I900. These scholars had good reasons to do so.

Despite changes in modern times, much of the religious life of Egyptian Muslims is still centred around the mosque, and religion as an institution of social control is still centred in governmental agencies. Mosque and government, then, are still connected, but each is changing. The persisting distinction between them may be seen in two facts: (1) many mosques continue to be somewhat independent of the governmental religious establishment; (2) it is still valid to distinguish between the religious officials ('ulama) whose functions are in the mosque, that is, who are concerned with worship and preaching, and those whose functions relate to doctrine, religious law, and central administration through governmental agencies. The connection between mosque and government may be seen in the fact that both the mosque 'ulama and the doctrinal and administrative 'ulama are still based upon sacred learning ('ilm). As the secular government increases its power over religious organizations (especially in the domains of justice and education-courts and schools) these connections between popular religious agencies and the governmental religious establishment grow, and the power of the 'ulama declines. In this paper I shall present information about the position of religion based upon statistical surveys and my own observations. I am aware of the limitations of both sources but I feel that, properly assessed, they may be helpful in a domain where scholars interested in contemporary society seldom inquire. Some of the facts I present are elementary; they are nonetheless useful, especially because they have been neglected in the increased attention to economic and political 'development.' Other facts in this paper are rather detailed and hard to explain; they are nonetheless important and may stimulate inquiries leading to explanations.

ISRAEL'S LEGAL SYSTEM, in the absence of a permanent constitution, is based on five principal sources: (1) Ottoman law, which had been the law of the land before the British defeated Turkey in World War I; (2) mandate law of Palestine; (3) English law common law and equity; (4) parliamentary law enacted by Israel's Knesset; and (5) religious law, a special body of law with a separate court system prevailing in matters of marriage, divorce, alimony, burial, and, in some instances, inheritance. The bulk has been English law. In the fields of bankruptcy, bills of exchange, criminal law, court procedure, rent restrictions, and torts, almost the entire jurisprudence has been English. However, as during the mandate period, there is no trial by jury, and no judges are popularly elected. The Law and Administration Ordinance, enacted by the provisional State Council on May 19, 1948, continued the laws and courts in force under the mandate, except as changed by the new state. Sixteen magistrate's courts have jurisdiction over minor civil and light criminal cases. Three district courts, sitting in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and Haifa, possess jurisdiction as courts of first instance in all civil matters not within the jurisdiction of the magistrate's courts and in all major criminal cases. They serve also as appellate courts for the magistrate's courts. Administratively, the judges of the magistrate's and district courts were, until August, 1953, under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Justice, and the minister appointed and promoted them. Under an amendment to the legal code passed by the Knesset, appointments are now made by the president on the recommendation of an appointments committee; and, administratively, these judges are directly responsible to no official of the Ministry of Justice other than the minister.2 On June 24, 1948, the provisional State Council enacted the Courts Ordinance providing for the functioning of the Supreme Court of Israel, with its judges to be appointed by the provisional government on the

This paper has two aims. Eventually I wish to discuss the question of how to understand the relation between philosophy and religious law (halakha) in Maimonides, an enigma in which much of Maimonides’ fascination seems to me to reside. But I shall approach this question indirectly, having first considered a later philosophical debate in which Maimonidean elements can be traced at the background.

Patriarchy in Pakistan results in inequalities to women. Issues emphasized include Islamic customary laws, the movement to Islamize penal and social behavioral codes, the mislabeling of Islamic beliefs as "westernization", and the rising women's movement's attempt to oppose present trends. Many practices thought to reflect Muslim culture are really the infliction of Islamic religious principles on pre-existing behavioral codes in Pakistan; thus, such practices are not actually Islamic teachings and are used to control social behavior. It is necessary to separate Islamic institution and actual Pakistanian practices in order to identify Islamic ideology's role in sustaining and vindicating patriachary. 3 roots of shaping jurisprudence are customary law, religious law, and British civil and criminal law. Further investigation of customary and religious laws currently employed indicates acceptance of Muslim practices promoting superiority of men and rejection of Islamic teachings promoting women's rights. Such Islamic teachings include a marriage settlement requiring men to give money to their wives, acknowledgement of marriages as an agreement between consenting adults, and a woman's right to divorce. Customs contradicting Islamic teachings and leading to inequalities for women include denial of a woman's access to economic resources, the annulment of the marriage settlement, and the relative ease of Muslim men to divorce their wives. Some communities practice purdah in which women are secluded from men and excluded in economic and political decisions. Such social restrictions minimize women's involvement in political decision making and in the judiciary. Exercising their right to vote and participating in trade unions, women would influence decision making. Resistance to current practices has been trade unions, women could influence decision making. resistance to current practices has been primarily from upper and middle class women; but to be effective all classes of women must unite. PRoblems confronting the women's movement are the need for a common language to communicate feminist messages to other developing countries and the movement being labelled westernized. To challenge Islamic ideology, the inequalities faced by women must be exposed and consensus and reasoning must be employed to establish equality. Furthermore, women must be ensured access and control over their economics resources and allowed to freely marry and divorce.

The female genital tract, so important for the survival of the species, is suitably housed out of sight within the safe confines of the bony pelvis with access only through the vulval introitus, guarded by the powerful adductor muscles of the thighs. It is the object of religious law, ritual and myth, and in Western society is predominantly unseen, untouched and unmentioned. In many families, even today, modesty forbids the exposure of naked little girls to the view of little boys, and quite often the family has no name at all for the vulva, which being unmentionable seems to need none.

Introduction Ibn Hazm (994-1064) was no doubt one of the most outstanding intellectual figures of Muslim Spain in particular and of the whole Muslim world in general. Though it is beyond the purpose and scope of this paper to give a complete profile of the man and his place in the intellectual history of Islam, it remains necessary to make some introductory remarks that would help in understanding the topic under discussion. In Ibn Hazm’s scholarly preparation the second stage was characterized to be a juridic-theological preparation to which he fully devoted himself following his political failure; the year 1031 is usually proposed to be the turning point in this new orientation of Ibn Hazm’s intellectual life. It was during this second stage that he wrote profusely on a variety of subjects and distinguished himself as a master dialectician and polemicist. His major works on religious matters such as Fisal, Ihkam, and Muhalla were the products of this period; in them as well as in many other treatises, Ibn Hazm discusses his religious ideas and doctrine and enthusiastically refutes his adversaries. “As a master dialectician he insisted on proofs (barnhin), whether arrived at on the basis of the holy texts (nusus), or through logical demonstration, or both.” His use and reliance on analysis of textual material and information was perhaps the most clear feature of Ibn Hazm’s polemics; this method was always in ...

In this book, Rosner, a hematologist and rabbinic scholar, has provided us with a highly readable survey of the many medical matters mentioned in the Old Testament and the Talmud. The volume is a short, well-organized, and valuable introduction to a subject now deeply embedded in a vast intellectual structure. Along with his own contemporary medical assessment, the author has supplemented the study of the original Judaic material with the commentaries of later rabbinic authorities so that we are given a considerable view of the meaning of the original scriptural and talmudic references to medical matters. Jewish religious law is often explained in relation to the source material. The book has chapters on topics such as specific diseases, eg, scurvy; body organs, eg, the heart; and areas of general interest, eg, medical ethics. A discussion of the physicians of the Talmud is particularly interesting. Rosner has made relatively little effort

My comments on Professor Brody’s stimulating and provocative paper will not deal either with his sketch of the ‘commercial contract’ model of the patient-physician relation, or with the common-law treatment of this relation, a treatment that, according to Brody, “is captured by” the commercial contract model. This is not my assignment. Neither will I be concerned with any systematic, critical assessment of what Professor Brody calls the ‘status model’ of physician-patient relations. What I wish to examine is whether and to what extent the ‘status model’ in fact “captures the treatment of the relation in Judaic Law,” as Brody claims, or fails to do so. The other principal objective of this commentary will be to amplify Brody’s penetrating account of the ethics of physician-patient realtions in Jewish law, where such amplification seems needed, and also to comment briefly on the societal values and principles that are both assumed and implied by a full understanding of these relations.

The customary law of the Burmese family, though permeated with Buddhist ethics, is not, as we have seen, religious law or ecclesiastical law, and from many mundane affairs both the religion and the Buddhist priesthood keep strictly aloof. The influence of Buddhist ethics is strong, however, not in family relations alone, but in the behaviours of society itself. Thus the farmer who does not respond with enthusiasm to proddings to grow two crops instead of one is not just being lazy, but he is being Buddhist in contentment, in his values, in his goal to grow enough to provide his family and himself in food and clothing and the basic needs and to have a little over to offer to the village monastery or contribute towards the annual Buddhist festival. The villagers who do not respond eagerly to suggestions that they raise fish or poultry for food, or for the market, are being Buddhist too, and they do not wish to raise lives, even lives of animals, to slaughter and make money by.

IN NATURE, vol. xxxiii. p. 377, there is a notice of a paper by M. de Morgan, published in Cosmos, on the Stone Age in the Malay Peninsula. Will you permit me to offer a few remarks with reference to this matter. In the first place, it is said that M. de Morgan came into contact with three native races, which he respectively names Sakayes [Sakai], Seumangs [Sěmang], and Rayats [Ryot]. I have put in brackets the commonly accepted spelling in the Straits. It is funny what peculiar mistakes travellers make when passing through a country the language of which they do not understand, ryot being the word used in the Straits to express those followers or retainers of a native chief who are not actually his debt slaves, but who owe him more or less of feudal allegiance; Malays here invariably use the word when speaking of the following of a Sakai chief. The word ryot is, I believe, also used in the same sense in India. With reference to the tribes of whom M. de Morgan speaks as living in the recesses of the mountains, and whom the Sakaies called “fire apes,” I cannot help remarking that I have never heard the Sakaies speak of them myself, nor can I find that any other Government servant here has heard of them either; still we are in pretty constant communication with certain of the Sakaies of these hills, and for my part I have at different times stayed for longer and shorter periods at the clearings of some of the chiefs whom M. de Morgan visited, and moreover I have employed most of the same Malays who followed M. de Morgan. By the bye, these were Sumatran Malays, and they told me some very extraordinary tales about the wild tribes before I started up country with them; these foreign Malays are especially addicted to telling marvellous tales of the wild tribes of the mountains, but so far I have not been able to verify their information in the least degree either from the Sakaies themselves or from native Malay sources. It would be interesting to know what equivalent was used for the expression “fire apes.” Was it a Malay word or a Sakai word? With reference to the Stone Age I quite agree with M. de Morgan in believing that at a not very late period—probably just before the Malay invasion—there were tribes living in the interior who were not acquainted with the use of iron; up to the present moment I have been able to collect twenty-two stone implements. I have sent drawings and notices of these to the Anthropological Institute. I may, however, here mention that of these twenty-two specimens one is the half of a stone bracelet; the rest are all chopping-tools of different descriptions, used, I think we may fairly conclude, by a race of boat-builders, who most likely constructed dug-outs, much like the Malays of the present day. I adduce this supposition from the fact that of my twenty-one specimens two are perfect gouges, and six others are of the description which Dr. Evans has classed under adzes. The cutting-edges of nearly all my specimens have been considerably damaged by use. The high polish which M. de Morgan's specimens—and mine also—exhibit is, I think, accounted for in a great measure by the fact that they are used and very highly prized by the Malays as whetstones; the women preserve them, especially to sharpen their razors on, with which they shave the heads of their children during the periods ordered by custom or religious law; and the men were, until lately, very anxious to procure them to sharpen the iron spurs used in cock-fighting. As almost all of the specimens procured by me have been purchased of Malays who have inherited them from their ancestors, and prized them as heir-looms, it is, I think, reasonable to suppose that in their original condition some of them, at least, were considerably rougher than when they came into our hands; this supposition is further confirmed by a remark made to me the other day by a Malay chief. He said that he once had a thunderstone given to him which was so rough that he had to wear it down on his emery-wheel before he could use it as a whetstone. I have one specimen which has no cutting-edge, but is squared off at each end and is almost spindle-shaped. I have also seen another specimen of the same description. Can it be that these two specimens have been manufactured by Malays for whetstopes out of the so-called thunder-stones? I cannot account for them in any other way; they are too slight for hammers.

The debate as to whether Jewishness is a biological trait inherent from an “authentic” “Jewish type” (judische Typus) ancestor or a system of beliefs has been raging for over two centuries. While the accumulated biological and anthropological evidence support the latter argument, recent genetic findings, bolstered by the direct-to-consumer genetic industry, purport to identify Jews or quantify one’s Jewishness from genomic data. To test the merit of claims that Jews and non-Jews are genetically distinguishable, we propose a benchmark where genomic data of Jews and non-Jews are hybridized over few generations and the observed and predicted Jewishness of the terminal offspring according to either the Orthodox religious law (Halacha) or the Israeli Lafw of Return are compared. Members of academia, the public, and 23andMe were invited to use the benchmark to test claims that Jews are genetically distinct from non-Jews. Here, we report the findings from these trials. We also compare the genomic similarity of ~300 individuals from nearly thirty Afro-Eurasian Jewish communities to a simulated judische Typus population. The results are discussed in light of modern trends in the genetics of Jews and related fields and provide a tentative answer to the ageless question “who is a Jew?”

This is the second edition of a landmark work that introduced to the English reader in a definitive manner the subject of medical ethics as viewed in terms of halacha or Jewish religious law. The original work, first published in 1959, has been updated with additional chapters focusing on ethical questions arising out of newer medical advances as well as recent responsa (rabbinical replies to specific halachic questions) pertaining to medical ethics.The wellspring of all Jewish law and learning is the Pentateuch or Torah, by tradition the product of the pre-Holy Land experience of the Jewish people in the second millenium before Christ. It is obvious, however, that history and cultural change will provide enormous accretions in relation to religious law. It is not surprising, therefore, that halacha is subject to repeated challenges, interpretations, and controversies as the Jewish people evolve and share in the movement of historical time.

Prophecy is used among the Apostles of John Maranke, an indigenous African church, to structure religious and everyday interactions. The prophetic account has a dialogical format and consists of the prophet's assertion and the candidate's response. Prophecies are performed at the beginning of every formal Apostolic ceremony. Each prophecy contains a short narrative about the subject's moral and spiritual state. Apostolic prophecy is a form of social drama in Victor Turner's sense of the term and a system of expression that shapes the universe of church members' spiritual discourse (see Turner 1957:91-94 and I974:37-45). Moreover, prophecy is an ecstatic expression that serves as an important means of social control among Apostles. Here, I will analyze the dramaturgical and dialogical structure of Apostolic prophecy as a ceremonial performance and an alternative system of linguistic and religious expression. The relationship between the narrative structure of prophecy and the prophetic reading as an act of social control will be examined. This analysis necessitates an emphasis on prophecies as verbal exchanges within the performative context of Apostolic ceremonies. In 1971, after having studied the Apostolic Church ofJohn Maranke for two years, I joined the group. Although many personal and circumstantial factors motivated my decision to join, it is undeniable that the process of conversion was dramatic for me and that now, over a decade and a half later, I still find that my life and my perception of "the religious experience" have been unalterably transformed as a result of my membership. I came to see Apostolic prophecy not only as a performance within a liturgically structured narrative but also as a moral act that had serious consequences for my own decisions and behavior. The moral impact of prophecy is reinforced by its performance as a type of ethnotheatre, intended to reinforce for the candidate the social and religious codes of Apostolic membership and to coax the candidate into conformity with aspects of religious morality and doctrine. Prophecy, however, is not a "morality play" that leaves the candidate with an abstract lesson. It is a thoroughly lived experience in which idealized lessons are intended for immediate daily application in every aspect of the candidate's life. Apostolic prophecy reanimates the relationship between religious law and spiri

Non-Muslim minorities within an Islamic state do not enjoy rights equal to those of the Muslim majority. Some apologist Muslim writers have tended to misrepresent Shari'ah, the historical religious law of the Muslims, in order to minimize the seriousness of discrimination against nonMuslims. Such an approach is futile not only because the misrepresentation can easily be exposed, but also because current public opinion is unwilling to tolerate any degree or form of discrimination on grounds of religion or belief. On a practical level, although most of the constitutions of modern Muslim states guarantee against religious discrimination, most of these constitutions also authorize the application of Shari'ah. As such, these constitutions sanction discrimination against religious minorities. This is inconsistent with the constitutions' own terms. The existence of such contradictions, and the underlying tensions they reflect, call for urgent and candid discussion of this problem. Moreover, the constitutions of some Muslim countries, such as Iran, have already openly approved of discrimination on grounds of religion.' If the current trend towards what is commonly known as Islamic fundamentalism continues, it may not be long before other Muslim countries follow suit.

Merry's comprehensive review shows us how studies of plural normative orderings during the past twenty-five years have greatly enriched our understanding of the complexity of normative structures, their interdependence and the ways in which these structures are involved in human agency. At the same time her review illustrates how little conceptual progress has been made. We do not have a more acute understanding nor a refined conceptual usage of the terms law, normative order, or pluralism. In a way this is reassuring. It tells us that stimulating new research and methodological approaches can be developed without giving much thought to these conceptual problems. The best historical writings in legal pluralism in colonial societies, such as the Dutch studies on Indonesian societies, did not excessively ponder whether the local normative systems should or should not be called law. The neo-classicists of legal pluralism such as Macaulay (1963) and Moore (1973) explicitly did not present their data as legal pluralism, and when Galanter (1981) tells us about indigenous law in western societies he does not make much fuss about it. Yet I do think that more conceptual clarity is desirable. Legalistic ideology has not yet been fully banned from the research methodology of sociolegal studies. Ideological bias is not barred from methodology by simply calling non-state normative systems law. Most studies in legal or normative pluralism, whatever their definition of law may be, still tend to recognize only a limited number of contexts in which the reproduction of elements from the legal system is really a legal process. Typically, it is judges (or other representatives of the state, by preference of the judicial apparatus), or more generally legal authorities, whose activity make the process legal. Reproduction of state law by ordinary citizens is not considered legal. This thinking is deeply ingrained in the methodology of sociolegal scholars (K. von Benda-Beckmann 1984: 103-107); it also colors the analyses of the "creation of customary law," to which Merry refers (F. von Benda-Beckmann, 1984). Descriptions of normative systems should include their ideologies, their claims to exclusive validity and to the monopoly of legitimate power, etc., as empirical phenomena. It is here that we encounter the ideology of legal centralism as the folk system of state officials and legal scientists. We may find similar legal ideologies in religious law or folk legal systems. But we may also find situa

Contrary to prevailing paradigms of modernization and secularization, I contend that extremism is the religious norm, and that it is not religious extremism but religious moderation that requires explanation. Relying on impressions from contemporary Judaism, extremism is defined here as the desire to expand the scope, detail and strictness of religious law; social isolation; and the rejection of the surrounding culture. Religious extremism is an impulse or an orientation which, when objectified in persons and institutions, is invariably moderated. Religious moderation can be accounted for by the mixed motivations of religious adherents, either individuals or groups, who temper their "religious" impulses in order to achieve "non-religious" goals at the individual or communal level. Religious moderation may be a strategy to persuade or convert others, or to protect the religious community itself against a hostile environment. In all instances, moderation is associated with religious prestige and strong communal commitments. The decline of the religious community permits the breakthrough of extremist tendencies. This is facilitated by the decline of the secular culture with which the religious moderates were associated. This theory is applied to two types of Jewish religious extremism in Israel, one anti-nationalist and the other ultra-nationalist in orientation.

in Holon, Israel. The Samaritans call themselves "guardians of the Law", in Hebrew shomrim or shomronim ; they feel that their observance of the Biblical laws is far stricter than that of the Jews, with whom they had a common history until the year one thousand B. C. E., when the Samaritans separated because of certain religious disputes. Jewish historians, however, maintain that the term Samaritan derives from the city of Samaria; the Samaritan observances of religious law are not stricter but of a different kind; and that the final separation of the Samaritan sect from its Jewish parent-body took place about six hundred years later in 332 B.C. E., when a rival Temple was established on Mount Gerizim.1 The strongest link between the Samaritans and the Jews is the reading and the chanting of the Pentateuch, the Five Books of Moses, which constitutes the basis of both religions. The specific chanting of the Hebrew Bible is termed cantillation. Cantillation proceeds according to special graphic signs attached to every word of the text. These cantillation motifs are called accents by European and ta'ame hamiqra by Hebrew grammarians. The Hebrew ta'ame hamiqra as used by Jews all over the world have 3 purposes: 1. the accentuation of the syllable, which can be pre-positive or post-positive (Hebr. mil'el or milra)

EVERY modern society has been faced with problems arising from inequalities among the various groups of which it is composed, particularly since the eighteenth-century proclamation in America that "all men are created equal," and the elaboration in France of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen. The differences which produced inequality have been variouseconomic, social, racial, linguistic, religious, political-and variously intertwined. In the Near East until very recent times the major boundary lines between groups, and therefore the principal barriers to a homogeneous society of equals, have been religious. Although today social and economic disparities in Near Eastern society have vastly increased as modern technology and finance have provided greater opportunities for getting and spending, and although nationalist rivalries now challenge the primacy of religious rivalries, it is still often true that religion is the dividing line, and that a man's creed is his distinguishing mark. In the Ottoman Empire of the early nineteenth century his religion provided a man's label, both in his own conceptual scheme and in the eyes of his neighbors and his governors. He was a Muslim, Greek Orthodox, Gregorian Armenian, Jew, Catholic, or Protestant before he was a Turk or Arab, a Greek or Bulgar, in the national sense, and also before he felt himself an Ottoman citizen. The Ottoman government, by granting official recognition to these millet's, as the religious communities were called, had preserved and even emphasized the religious distinctions. The empire itself was governed by Muslims; its law was based on the religious law of Islam. But within this empire the several Christian communities and the Jewish community enjoyed a partial autonomy, whereby the ecclesiastical hierarchy which administered the millet supervised not only the religious, educational

Water legislation in the Middle East has a recorded history of four millennia. Since little grows in Southwest Asia' without irrigation (save in some small areas of adequate rainfall), every society which cultivated the soil in that part of the world has found it necessary to regulate the legal relationship between man and man, and man and society; with respect to water. Water legislation is therefore significant in terms of the development of the Middle East. Water legislation is a policy-making instrument in the hands of a government intent on mobilizing national water resources to the fullest degree possible. In the Middle East today, four levels of water legislation are discernible. Local customs, based in part on legal principles dating back perhaps to earliest antiquity, still dominate the water relationships in many parts of the area. Principles of religious law (or civil-law provisions of religious law codes) often provide a theoretical superstructure which, more often than not, has an independent legal existence overshadowed by ancient customs on the one hand and more recent legislation on the other. In many parts of the Middle East, Ottoman law has survived, nearly two generations after the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire, to remain an important aspect of water laws. Finally, the independent states of the area also have more recent legislation, some of it enacted by European governments that had control of parts of the region, some of it enacted after these states attained independence. These new laws may be merely supplementary regulations, designed to facilitate the execution of older legislation rather than to supersede it with new principles. However, it would seem that in order to facilitate modern economic development, the States of the area must, by new legislation, arrogate to themselves sweeping power to regulate the utilization, development, and conservation of national water resources.

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.

Like many British authors of books about India before independence, William Harrison Moreland (1868–1938) had worked as a civil servant in the subcontinent. He spent twenty-five years in the North-West Provinces, and for twelve years he was Director of Land Records and Agriculture. He was committed to improving the agricultural system of the region, and even established an agricultural college in Kanpur. After he retired, he decided to examine old land and revenue records, resulting in this work, which was published in 1929. Starting in the thirteenth century, the book gives a historical context to the changing land use and revenue practices in India. Moreland also examines the role of religious law and the influence of successive regimes and rulers on the development of agrarian practices as well as on the lives and work of India's peasantry.