News

New law and justice research centre to study Islamic Criminal Justice systems

(5 April 2006)

Members of the international legal community are linking up through a new research centre at Durham University - home of one of Britain’s leading law departments – to examine aspects of criminal law around the world.

One of the first projects of the Centre for Criminal Law and Criminal Justice (CCLCJ) will look at Islamic criminal justice systems. It is a unique study, aiming to work towards a better understanding of those systems and establish a dialogue on academic and practitioner levels between lawyers in Muslim countries and elsewhere.

The Islamic Criminal Justice Project is a keynote initiative for the CCLCJ. The new Centre aims to increase awareness and cooperation among members of the legal profession involved in criminal law worldwide. It will draw on the experience and knowledge that it brings together as an international forum for discussion and research in criminal law and criminal law theory, criminal procedure and criminal justice issues, including criminology.

Through the Islamic Project, the CCLCJ plans to set up an online database of laws, jurisprudence and literature not easily available to the non-Arabic speaking world. It wants to increase the access to such sources by international legal organisations such as international courts - that often have to omit Arabic sources for sheer lack of linguistic or logistic facilities. The CCLCJ will establish a teaching module for Islamic law for non-Arabic speakers and in the near future will also participate in symposia in the Arab/Muslim world on questions of interest to the Muslim hosts. It will seek to explain the approach of selected national jurisdictions to certain problems such as the treatment of blasphemy in a modern secular state dedicated to the freedom of expression, while at the same time avoiding attempts at indoctrination.

Other topics may include the accession of Muslim states to international treaties such as the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, where the constitutional framework can be examined and compared to that of the Arab country in question. A further mid-term aim of the CCLCJ will be to establish links to universities and institutions in countries with Islamic legal systems.

Director of the CCLCJ, Professor Michael Bohlander, an expert in international and comparative criminal law, said: “The experience of recent years, especially in the international criminal tribunals, has shown that examples of meaningful research in the areas of Islamic criminal justice systems are few and far between. To a large extent this is based on a simple problem, the linguistic barrier, and to a general lack of knowledge of the principles of Islamic law in the Western world.

“The Islamic Criminal Justice Project is a first step in a longer process of investigation and exchange of information which will ultimately lead to a better mutual understanding on both sides, something that can only be welcomed given that understanding the Islamic world will be one of the major global challenges for the Western political hemisphere. It is vital, in our view, that Muslim countries take these matters into their own hands, by establishing links with institutions in the West that are not policy-driven and can afford to take a look at the bigger picture. Durham University and the CCLCJ are offering that opportunity.”

Professor Bohlander has served as a Judge in Germany and as Senior Legal Officer at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. The Chairwoman of CCLCJ is Navanethem Pillay, Justice of the Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Court in The Hague and formerly President of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.

Judge Pillay has applauded Durham University for setting up the new Centre. She said: “I believe that the mission of the Centre is crucial for a better understanding of the manifold issues that judges, lawyers and law-makers face in the rapidly globalising fora of international and transnational criminal justice. I hope that the work of the Centre will be used by them in shaping the way forward. I especially commend the Centre’s unique Islamic Criminal Justice Project, which will address a hugely underestimated and under-researched field of legal interaction and will hopefully make a contribution to the better understanding of the principles underlying Islamic criminal law. Durham University is to be congratulated for its vision in establishing such a Centre, and I look forward to a fruitful and stimulating cooperation.”

Other members of CCLCJ have expertise in areas such as the interrelation between gender and crime, housing law and crime, humanitarian law, commercial law and fraud and night-time economies and crime prevention and control.

CCLCJ work includes long-term research projects, national and international conferences, lecture series from visiting speakers and post-graduate or post-doctoral research. It will cooperate with and help set up similar institutions on a world-wide level, especially by forging links with countries in the former East, Middle East, Latin America, Africa and Asia, provide consultancy work for political decision-making on a national and international level and offer training for legal personnel in transitional or newly emerging criminal justice systems or assisting in academic institution building.

The CCLCJ’s website is at:

• www.dur.ac.uk/cclcj