Islamic Law as a Comparable Model in Comparative Legal Research: Devising a Method

Increasingly, Islamic law has become the subject of comparative legal study. Further, in the applied sense, comparative legal studies’ greatest value lies in understanding our own legal systems, as well as benefiting from other legal systems by importing what we lack from them. Unlike secular legal systems, Islamic law, being religious in nature and having eschatological connotations, requires reworking the comparative legal method to take account of that. When it comes to religious laws, hermeneutics play a key role, as a religious legal system will only be receptive to foreign norms if such norms earn their place internally, following hermeneutic justification. Cultural and religious pride, as well as intellectual impartiality, decrees that a legal solution should not be preferable just because it comes from the First World. This paper will therefore formulate a methodology for comparative legal studies where religious law is one of the comparative models and there are potential suggestions of legal transplant.