Islamic jurisprudence is a much misunderstood system. The misunderstanding is due to lack of information and to centuries of prejudice. This book seeks to present information, not at present available in a single work, on the pioneering efforts of Islamic jurists to develop a comprehensive body of human rights, principles and practice, as well as a corpus of international law principles. The attempt to develop such international law principles long anticipated any similar work in other legal or cultural systems. Human rights doctrine based upon the Qu'ran and the Sunna of the Prophet was expressed in terms which will strike the reader as surprisingly modern. In international law, Islamic treatises anticipated the work of Grotius by eight centuries. It is hoped that this systematic exposition, not attempted before in such detail, will help considerably in reducing misunderstanding and the resulting tensions, as well as being of considerable value to the Islamic world. The work will be of interest not only to lawyers, but also to philosophers, historians, sociologists, political scientists and students of international affairs.
