(As part of our blog round-table book discussion, this is the first of the substantive responses to Julia Stephen’s Governing Islam: Law, Empire and Secularism in South Asia, by Professor Zubair...
Zubair Abbasi
Zubair Abbasi is an Assistant Professor at the Shaikh Ahmad Hasan School of Law at LUMS, Pakistan. Zubair Abbasi completed his doctorate at the Faculty of Law, Oxford University. The focus of his doctoral thesis was on the transplantation of the English legal system in colonial India and the interaction between Islamic law (Fiqh) and English law in this process. He conducted a case study of the developments in Islamic waqf law under the British legal system by analysing the jurisprudence developed in the judgments of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council and various Indian High Courts. His research revealed the crucial role played by Muslim lawyers, judges, ‘ulama’, and politicians in the formation of Anglo-Muhammadan Law (later called Muslim Personal Law). It showed how they simultaneously negotiated and collaborated with, and resisted the colonial administrators in the making and operation of the new Indian legal system. Dr Abbasi is currently exploring the legal process of the ‘judicial Islamisation’ of laws in Pakistan in the historical context of the convergence of the principles of Islamic law and English law in colonial India. He is also examining the relationship between Sharia and the modern state in the larger context of the scholarship that explores the relationship between different legal systems and their impact on the economic and political development of a country.
Dr Abbasi is interested in comparative commercial and organisational law and its impact on economic and political developments in the developing world, especially in South Asia and the Middle East. He holds an LL.M Corporate Governance, Manchester University and LL.B (Hons) Sharia & Law, International Islamic University Islamabad. He practiced as a commercial and corporate lawyer in Islamabad for several years before joining academia. Dr Abbasi has published in the areas of corporate legal theory, classical Islamic law, Indian legal history, law and finance, and law and development.