Sharia and the Modern State: How the British Empire—and its Muslim Subjects—Transformed Islamic Law

Many people, whether Muslim or non-Muslim, might think of Sharia as ancient and unchanging. But like any form of law, it has a history. And like every aspect of religion, it was transformed in the modern era. This episode examines how Sharia changed during the two centuries when the British Empire ruled over large parts of the Muslim world. Surveying two transformational centuries—from around 1750 to around 1950—we’ll hear what happened to Sharia as British rule fanned out from India (including what is now Pakistan and Bangladesh) to Malaya (including what is today Malaysia and Singapore) then Egypt. We’ll learn how Sharia metamorphosed from a general societal discourse to a narrower notion of ‘Islamic law’ then state law in turn. The result was what this episode’s expert guest has called “the paradox of Islamic law,” by which Sharia was centralized by the state but at the same time marginalized by state institutions. Nile Green talks to Iza Hussin, author of The Politics of Islamic Law: Local Elites, Colonial Authority, and the Making of the Muslim State (University of Chicago Press, 2016).