Islam and International Humanitarian Law

Overview

The Islam-IHL initiative examines from multiple perspectives the ongoing role of Islam, including Islamic leaders, in International Humanitarian Law (IHL), and the potential of that contribution for contending with new forms of warfare and international conflicts. The goal of the Workshop is to begin identifying the most pressing issues at the intersection of Islamic jurisprudence and humanitarian law and to consider how their shared concerns may prompt creativity in addressing troubling gaps in IHL today—notably, the lack of standards for dealing with the rise of irregular armies, or the inability of the law to accommodate asymmetric forms of attacks by non-state entities against sovereign states.

Topics for Discussion will likely include the role of culturally and religiously-based legal norms and their authoritative sources for limiting armed conflict’s effects on victims; the meaning of asymmetry from the perspective of the weaker party; conflicting and even incompatible notions of legitimacy and defense in military actions; and the role of universal human rights standards in relation to culture and conflict.

Approach: The bodies of law under consideration are “living traditions,” to paraphrase the 8th century jurist al-Awzai’s view of Islamic law, the uninterrupted, intergenerational practice of adapting approved legal precepts to contemporary circumstances. This view rebuts the tendency to reduce Western and Islamic legal traditions to static or monolithic constructs by recognizing each as complex, dynamic, and plural (made up of sub-traditions). Given the inherent complexity of this subject across traditional disciplines and practice areas (i.e., international humanitarian, military, legal, and policy communities) an interdisciplinary approach and sustained collaboration for advancing knowledge on this pressing topic is necessary.

Objective

The resulting analysis from the Islam-IHL initiative will lay the groundwork for engaging a larger community of practitioners and scholars in understanding the relationship between IHL and Islamic law for internationally viable approaches to present-day asymmetric challenges—including those involving Islamic groups or states.

Research Questions

• What role does Islam play in international laws and norms for conducting warfare and why do some consider Islamic law an alternative to IHL?

• Does incorporating primary and secondary Islamic sources foster a different understanding and legal interpretation of key IHL provisions and its present challenges today?

• What shared or divergent visions and precepts underlie IHL and Islamic attempts to humanize warfare?

• Do Islamic doctrines of warfare have lessons for contemporary conflict settings, asymmetric warfare, non-state belligerents, present gaps in IHL, or the relationship between Jus in bello and Jus ad bellum?

• Are contesting interpretations of Islamic law enabling Islamist interpretations of warfare and the use of violence for social and political change?

• What would a productive synthesis look like between Islamic jurisprudence and IHL that humanizes war while preserving state’s sovereignty, a balance central to the universal acceptance of IHL?

Please contact Corri Zoli if you are interested in this initiative.