Accommodating Muslims in Europe Opportunities for Minority Fiqh

Abstract

The presence of large number of Muslims in Western Europe in the last thirty years has given rise to considerable challenges for Islamic law and Western legal systems. Can the legal rules and institutions of Islamic law be applied to contemporary Western Europe where Muslims are a minority? How should liberal democracies accommodate Muslims who continue to grant authority to Islamic law in their daily lives and social practices? Do the two sources of legal norms conflict, and if so can this conflict be resolved or managed? The satisfactory resolution of these issues depends on developments in a system of Islamic law for Muslim minorities which is often termed minority fiqh (fiqh al-aqalliyat). It is also dependant on getting the general theory of Islamic law right.