FOR EDUCATIONAL USE ONLY
3 UCLA J. Islamic & Near E. L. 53
UCLA Journal of Islamic and Near Eastern Law
Fall/Winter 2003-2004
Article
*53 "ISLAMIC LAND": GROUP RIGHTS, NATIONAL IDENTITY AND LAW
Andrew Grossman [FNa1]
Copyright © 2004 Regents of the University of California; Andrew Grossman
Introduction Much of the discourse concerning Western
actions in areas of Muslim interest has centered on the legitimacy of
non-Muslim intervention and intrusion in "Islamic land." In the absence
of an articulated theology of land in Islam, "Islamic" or "Muslim" land
may be read as territory and population now or recently under Islamic
governance, including Lebanon, [FN1] the West Bank and Gaza. [FN2]
Some scholars would define the term to comprise "every land which is
under the just Islamic rule and in which the benevolent Islamic shari'a prevails"; [FN3]
this however confuses the result hoped for in the Islamist struggle
with the territorial scope of that campaign. The United States has been
a particular target of hostility and reprisal for its perceived
enabling of Israeli usurpation of "inalienable" Palestinian territory
and for its own intrusion into the "inviolable" Islamic Nation,
including its military forces stationed in Saudi Arabia and its
relationship and influence over Arab and Muslim governments as well as
its cultural hegemony. There is some expediency here and application of
a double standard: in the circumstances and in *54
the era in which it is admitted that sovereign title to land may be
vested; in recognition of human and individual rights, group rights and
a voice in governance by religious minorities; and more specifically in
relation to the status and mission of the West's own growing Muslim
communities. The Western state has defined itself in human rights (or
constitutional law) terms that may be alien to Islamic thought but by
which Muslims and others feel justified in criticizing it. At the same
time, for the Islamic state political convenience and public consensus
would seem to produce a ratchet effect leading to irreversible steps
towards orthodoxy, [FN4] a
situation in which Western nations as guarantors of refugee law and as
promoters of their liberal form of human rights law may have an
interest. [FN5] Among many Muslim intellectuals and activists socialism and secular nationalism have been supplanted by the Islamic awakening. [FN6]
Fair appraisal of the issues is occasionally
obstructed by ambiguity, including mistranslation, misrepresentation
and quotations selectively chosen, misleadingly edited and taken out of
context. [FN7] To this may be
added intellectual and political barriers posed by anathemas of
idolatry, syncretism, apostasy, blasphemy and heresy. [FN8]
To the Islamist tendency, international-law and human-rights norms may
be pre-empted by shari'a, and Qur'anic ambiguity may be resolved in
ways hostile to the West.
A further challenge for targets of the
Islamist tendency is that even those within the Muslim community who
reject its strident dictates may admit *55
its religious logic and historical validity. Xenophobia may follow
inevitably from certain basic tenets of Islam, jealous territoriality
from principles of waqf, jihad, irtidad (apostasy), personal status and
Islamic governance. Shari'a may conflict with external public and
private international law and human rights precepts, not least because
of the Islamist tendency's arrogation to itself of the right of
governance: "wherever an Islamic community exists as a concrete example
of the Divinely-ordained system of life, it has a Divinely-given right
to step forward and establish political authority." [FN9]
The return to classical norms of Islamic law in the courts of Islamic
countries in the post-World War II period seems to equate to an
abandonment of accommodation of Western notions of rights and status
that occurred in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. [FN10] There are exceptions to the rejection
of Western concepts where, pragmatically, such
classical views would compromise the exercise of local sovereign power
or advancement of Muslims' collective interests, but this is a matter
of practical imperatives. Independently sovereign Muslim communities
have been in existence sufficiently long to have created discrete
identities, political cultures and interests through education and
propaganda, probably an irreversible phenomenon.
With divergent
interests elsewhere, the major issue of Muslim consensus is that of
Palestine and Israel, for which Islamic law and Muslim interpretations
of international law have been mustered. Much of the analysis here is
devoted to that region, although the principles discussed apply also to
other regions and other matters of conflict and concern, notably
including the question of any state's entitlement to the unconditional
allegiance of its citizens. [FN11] This goes beyond religion [FN12] and extends to the broad tolerance of divided loyalty and dual nationality made inevitable by the postwar development of *56
human rights and gender equality in the West, where juridical and
political developments promoted the emphasis of rights over obligations
in nationality matters. It also reaches the targeting of the West as a
perceived obstacle to the realization of Islamic and Islamic-law aims,
and it highlights the issue raised by Laski and others who wrote of
political pluralism and of alternative loyalties to church and trade
union. [FN13]
Open wounds and unsettled grievances in many parts of the world relate to
historiography, recent and ancient, real and
imagined. Claims for redress may be buttressed by principles of law
that are obscure to the uninitiated but which to their proponents
define absolute rights and entitlement to justice, and before which
diplomacy is irrelevant and compromise impossible. The aim of this
study is to highlight points of ambiguity, doubt, dissimulation and
dissent among Muslim jurists and writers and to review some principles
of Islamic law as they conflict with external jurisprudence. Two
particular issues flow from the "Islamic land" discourse: sovereignty
over territory and the nature of governance over Muslims, specifically
the accusation by Islamists that particular Arab and Muslim governments
are dependent upon and responsive to Western interests rather than
Muslim authority and Muslim values. As these issues have been aired,
the Palestine-Israel dispute has become an expedient focus for Arab and
Muslim grievances and a venue for intellectual and physical struggle
between dar al-Islam and dar al-harb. Other areas of dispute such as
Kashmir, Chechnya and Mindanao do not evoke the same, Western,
adversary nor capture the imagination and attention of both the
Islamist tendency and the worldwide Muslim masses.
In this article
an attempt is made, without any pretense of exhaustiveness, to seek the
roots of these conflicts in early Islamic and modern Islamist argument
regarding Muslim land and community.
Waqf Waqf, the Islamic system of pious trust in its
three variants, religious, philanthropic and familial, is intrinsic to
the Muslim systems of wealth management and charity, [FN14] including the avoidance of normal rules of succession. *57
It, and taxes, were the means of financing jihad and the expansion of
the faith. It has come to be accommodated in virtually all societies
where substantial numbers of Muslims reside. [FN15]
The colonial experience left a substantial case law and legislation
dealing with its conflicts with established Western concepts. [FN16]
Removal of land from the market in perpetuity in the nature of mortmain
has economic consequences that have led repeatedly to governmental
control [FN17] or seizure. [FN18] This is not a new problem:
The growing needs of States, either to finance wars or to achieve
economic, political and social reform dealt decisive blows to the
waqaf: the Ottoman Empire and Egypt imposed greater and greater levies
on these institutions to meet budget deficits, depriving at the same
time those sectors which most resisted change imposed by central
government: the ulemas, the brotherhoods and the Janissaries. [FN19]
In Muslim theology, waqf land may be exchanged for other, comparable
property, but it is supposed that income will continue to be devoted to
charitable or pious purposes forever. The concept has been sought
application in respect of the totality of Israel and
Palestine to justify claims for political status as well as in a purely
legal sense; one might in fact see a parallel in the claims of certain
Zionists to "all of Judea and Samaria" and the Israeli support of
settlements in the West Bank and Gaza. The Islamist contention
propounded by Hamas and others is that since "all of Palestine is
Islamic *58 waqf" [FN20]
it is inalienable outside the Muslim community. The assertion is
founded upon a proposition that territory conquered in jihad becomes
waqf land. The source is the recorded opinion of the Second Caliph,
Umar Ibn al-Khattab upon the conquest of Syria and Iraq, [FN21] and the tradition:
If the Imam distributes the lands amongst those who captured them, they
become 'ushr lands, and their previous owners become slaves. If he does
not distribute the lands but leaves them in whole, as a trust to the
Muslims, then the poll-tax lies on the necks of their owners, who are
free, while their lands are charged with kharaj tax. [FN22]
Yet this is far from a clear justification for the Islamist
characterization of Palestinian land and could in any event likewise be
said of other parts of the early "territory of Islam" . What is known
of the peace treaties concluded at the time of the capture of Jerusalem
and Syria in the Year 15 is inconclusive. Thus, the letters to the
peoples promise that "[n]either they, nor the land on which they stand,
nor their cross, nor their property will be damaged." [FN23]
Ifran Mahmud Raana, in his treatise on Umar's political economy,
underlines Umar's concern to abolish "absentee landlordism" and says
that in Syria he "declared all land as public property and left it to
the former cultivators on payment of a certain sum annually as land
revenue (kharaj). Thus all the lands in Saward, Mesopotamia, Syria and
Egypt were declared as public lands which could not be bought and
sold." [FN24] Yet if the
latter is deemed to comprise waqf then one might ask why that status
should be attributed only to the lands now constituting Palestine and
Israel and not to the other conquered lands mentioned. Without
prejudice to further research into the subject, the Hamas argument is
tenuous, particularly in view of the subsequent history of land use and
transmission in the region and the subordination everywhere to civil
land law of historical, religious and mythical claims. It does merit
further scholarly attention, however, because of its acceptance by many
Palestinians and the existence of early material that might shed
further light *59
on the question when placed in context. Abu'l-Hasan al-Mawardi
discussed the "different statuses of the regions" in his treatise on
the laws of Islamic Governance in terms that suggest lack of a 5th
Century consensus. [FN25]
In matters relating to political Islam and in the absence of clear
early authority, doctrinal accuracy may be less influential than
popular perception; scientific accuracy less than invented orthodoxy. [FN26]
The relevance to diplomacy and modern courts of
ancient Islamic political theory that dates from the Caliphate and has
not been subject to rethinking until modern times may be open to
question. Claims to territory grounded in religion and in conquest
encounter two obstacles beyond those recently established in
international law: first, potentially competing claims based on other,
conflicting religious doctrine; second, pre-emption by earlier or later
conquest. Further, if title or sovereignty over territory cannot today
be gained by conquest, [FN27]
under what conditions should the validity of title acquired by conquest
pre-dating such rule be questioned? And under what circumstances may
objection to violent acquisition of sovereignty be waived by treaty or
pre-empted by international instrument? Answers to these questions are
relevant to many of the border changes of the post-World War II period
as well as more recent ethnic disputes. Arcane arguments based on chain
of title and power to convey sovereignty lose their force with passage
of time, although they may be sufficient to fire the imagination and
anger of those sympathetic to the aggrieved and their successors. The
Hamas argument goes to the right of the State of Israel to exist and to
dictate anything in relation to rights over land. Elihu Lauterpacht
wrote that "[t]he right of a State to exist flows from its factual
existence--especially when that existence is prolonged, shows every
sign of continuance and is recognized by the generality of nations." [FN28] Mohamed Bedjaoui would counter that "[t]he Arabs are certainly determined to
destroy Israel as a state and a political entity established on an Arab *60 land," [FN29]
a phraseology which strongly suggests military, rather than diplomatic
or legal argument or action. Bernard Lewis has written exhaustively on
the past experience of Jews in Islamdom, [FN30]
describing a status that the Jewish polity in Israel is unlikely to
countenance as part of any settlement. In any event, an Islamic-law
argument such as that based on the principle of waqf is scarcely likely
to be entertained in a non-religious forum outside the Islamic world.
Even from the standpoint of Islamic law, neither the argument nor the
underlying facts are unquestioned or free from ambiguity [FN31]
and there has been only limited research into the early history of
waqf, an institution that developed in the post-Qur'anic period. [FN32]
Professor Moshe Gil judges that
[t]he most important tradition concerning the waqf . . . is that which
preserved a saying allegedly uttered by the Prophet to Umar ibn
al-Khattab: as Umar received land in Khaybar, the Prophet asked him to
make this land habs, i.e., waqf, and use it as sadaqa: in shi'ta
habasta aslaha wa-tasaddaqta biha. In simple, modern, terms we
interpret this to mean that the title, or legal ownership, of the land
should belong to the Muslim community, it having been declared habs. [FN33]
The Qur'an [FN34] and treatises on jihad [FN35] address the issue of booty and its division among the Muslim victors without confirming the
notion that conquered lands should become waqf or that any particular territory should be treated *61
differently from any other, Palestine from other former Ottoman lands.
It might be presumed from historical experience that the land of
conquered peoples who accept Islam and thus become part of the dar
al-Islam would be exempt from attribution of waqf rules through
conquest. Other mixed territories including India, Lebanon, and various
countries of sub-Saharan Africa, have evidenced the tension of a
universalist Islam competing with proponents of secular governance.
Here, conquest was "incomplete"; there was a heterogeneous population
and more pragmatic rules applied. [FN36]
The claim of waqf immutability and inalienability [FN37]
in support of the Muslim argument for title to all of Palestine seeks
to defeat Israeli claims of right (to any or all land under Israeli
control) based on Security Council resolution, [FN38]
international recognition, settlement, conquest and purchase. The
further argument, largely independent of that based on waqf, contests
retention of land seized in battle in the modern era and rejects
Israeli sovereignty on that account, although the prior, adverse claim
is, itself, based on (ancient) spoils of war. [FN39]
As sovereign title to virtually all the world's land is based upon
settlement, discovery, conquest or treaty at some particular date, and
as rejection of border changes by force of arms is recent [FN40] and subject to exceptions of pragmatism and expedience, [FN41] it does not appear that reliance on a still-developing
international-law rule assists analysis in the case of Palestine as it would depend on retroactive application. [FN42] Muslim as well as *62
mixed states have asserted the power to alter vested waqf rights, and
ultimately proponents of the "Palestine as waqf" argument must first
effectively challenge Israeli sovereignty itself if that country's
right of eminent domain is to be denied--a circular argument.
Israeli law does recognize the institution of waqf in its traditional
role as charitable trust and as custodian of religious sites, but waqf
land had been subject to seizure as any other under the absentee
property laws. [FN43]
The Israeli government and judiciary have often defeated Arab land
claims as part of a consistent policy of bias against Muslim land
ownership and control and in favor of hebraicization of land and
society. [FN44] Such statutory and judicial bias is scarcely unique to the Palestinian context [FN45]
and the use of the device of "constructive abandonment", broadly
construed, as criterion for divestiture of title to achieve political
aims has been seen elsewhere. [FN46]
Inevitably the published analyses tend more towards advocacy than
dispassionate conclusion based on consensus norms. It is not obvious
that any middle ground exists on the issue of property rights and
sovereign control, which returns the issue to the political arena if
some compromise, such as division of sovereignty [FN47] or a *63 secular state free of any religious-based law or governance, [FN48] is to be found. The
waqf argument, then, would appeal to those
otherwise convinced of the correctness of an exclusively Muslim or Arab
control of Palestine, and is used in support of the claim of
inalienability of title. It is unlikely to influence those with real
power and control over the territory and the secular law. That the
issue is a matter of sovereignty, military capacity and politics rather
than philosophy and legal theory is suggested by the fact that land
purchased by the Jewish National Fund is held, in principle, in
perpetuity in the name and for the use of "the Jewish people" [FN49]: the reciprocal of the waqf argument.
Jihad The argument for Palestine as waqf depends upon
on the territory's ancient conquest in jihad. Much of the debate on
jihad concerns the distinction between "greater" and "lesser"
jihad--i.e., whether it necessarily involves confrontation with dar
al-harb or whether the major battle is with spiritual hindrances rather
than unbelievers. [FN50] A
good part of this is dissimulation and Alfred Morabia, in his treatise
on jihad, finds it a "false quarrel": "each deprives jihad of its
evolved perspective, in refusing to see in it the military force of the
umma against all that stands in the way of its march forward. And this
is not always the 'infidels'--far from it." [FN51] The latter comment reminds us of the aggressive internal dissent and the
philosophy for which Sayyid Qutb was put to death
by the Egyptian government: that "[h]ukm, power to legislate, belongs
only to God . . . whoever claims to possess it will in fact be denying
God one of His fundamental rights . . . [and] is clear *64 apostasy beyond any doubt." [FN52]
Similarly aggressive interpretations of a politicized Islam were put
forth by Sayyid Mawdudi in Muslim India, and, from a Shiite
perspective, Ruhollah Khomeini (1902-1989) in Iran. For Qutb, exponent
of the Muslim Brotherhood, jihad was a permanent situation of armed
conflict. He argued that while strategic compromise may be necessary
where the Islamic community is the weaker party, the ultimate focus
must be a struggle against the jahiliyyah (using the term for the
pre-Islamic time of ignorance) surrounding Muslims even today and even
at home.
Since the objective of Islam is a decisive declaration
of man's freedom, not merely on the philosophical plane but also in the
actual life, it must employ jihad. It is immaterial whether the
homeland of Islam--in the true Islamic sense, dar al-Islam--is in a
condition of peace or whether it is threatened by its neighbors. When
Islam calls for peace, its objective is not a superficial peace
requiring only that the part of the earth where the followers of Islam
are residing remain secure. The peace of Islam means that din (i.e.,
the law of the society) be purified for Allah, that all people should
obey Allah alone, and every system that permits some people to rule over others be abolished. [FN53]
The new Twentieth Century political Islam claimed a purist, literalist
ancient Islam for its own while dismissing early sources and
conclusions that failed to support its political aims. Islamists'
politics related not just to their own lands, or even the umma, but to
all the world's population, expressing the universal vocation of Islam.
Their populist arguments were based on a selective reading and strained
interpretation of the early Islamic scholars, notably Ibn Taymiyya. [FN54]
The uncontrolled aggression in support of which particular scholars may
interpret the law, the nature of any fatwa decreed and the targets of
their campaigns may be incidental to an overall political and religious
agenda. Islamist enlistment of shari'a seems to be a matter of advocacy
and justification and the underlying argument lacks rigorous analysis.
Particular schools of thought, including the Deoband School [FN55] and the Wahhabi/*65 Salafist movement [FN56] and their followers, [FN57]
have accepted and promoted the most aggressive interpretations of
Islamic law including the rules of jihad, and a certain bellicosity and
confrontation are inevitable; terror merely another tactic of
unfettered struggle. Yet not all scholars find support in ancient
documents for an expansive and hostile definition of jihad and
treatment of non-members of the community. [FN58] Particular movements, it is argued, have grounded political ideology on spurious theology. [FN59] However, so long as a
selective and literalist interpretation of Islam
is accepted by significant numbers of non-activist (or passive,
modernized) Muslims as the "correct" or "ideal" and orthodox religious
norm, anti-Western activists will have a ready source of moral and
material support. [FN60]
Religious doctrine is rarely a defense to criminal prosecution, domestic or international, [FN61]
nor to noncompliance with treaty obligations. Yet, a number of states
which declare shari'a to be paramount national law have ratified
treaties which fix norms that they now say are inconsistent with (and
therefore inapplicable in the context of) religious norms. In some
cases, but not always, reservations highlight the discrepancy. [FN62] There may be a genuine *66
conflict of laws. Here is the essence of the dual allegiance problem:
it is not unknown for governments to claim the loyalty of their
ressortissants living abroad, including nationals of the host country. [FN63]
This creates a particular problem where such a government supports the
implementation abroad by private parties of a death sentence pronounced
by religious authorities, as in the Salman Rushdie affair. In the
non-criminal context ordre public that refuses recognition to status
may fail to be applied where the conduct or status in question,
typically polygamous marriage, has its effects outside the
jurisdiction. [FN64]
Western norms scarcely any longer allow critical review of allegiance
beyond the obligations of citizens and residents relating to taxation,
military service and treason. [FN65]
The essence of jihad, however, would seem to imply a continuing
struggle to supersede, or to overthrow, Western norms from inside and
outside; but a Western response would need to be predicated upon some
overt act, an incitement to criminal activity. This is part of the
asymmetry of human rights in matters concerning even the security of
the state and especially where those rights touch upon freedom of
thought and *67
expression. Some crime or knowledge of its undertaking or at least an
administrative irregularity needs to be alleged to proceed against an
individual known or believed to sympathize with the enemy. The
potential response of the liberal state to political disaffection or to
disloyalty by a minority group is limited. Mass denaturalization and
expatriation is today impossible in the West. [FN66]
Sovereignty, the state, allegiance and personal status
Three characteristics of the Muslim-Western dialog have impeded
rational discourse: the Islamic insistence that shari'a preempts any
other source of law, [FN67] sometimes noted in reservations to treaties and constitutional provisions; official mistranslation of Arabic source material; [FN68] and revisionist history supported by confused references. [FN69]
With respect to Palestine, there is on the Palestinian side an emphasis
upon demands to right historical wrongs and a refusal to attribute
relevance to de facto status. Western experience, Western institutions
and Western solutions, alien to Arab tradition and to Muslim doctrine, are
non-responsive to their demands. This is unsurprising: the concept of
the modern state and its secular civil law system are themselves
foreign to Islam, for which sovereignty is reserved to God, sole
legitimate *68 source of legal authority and norms, [FN70] and believers constitute a single brotherhood. [FN71]
Adherents of other recognized religions co-existed in Muslim-controlled
territory only as dhimmi, sometimes precariously, with lesser status.
Until the modern era, arguably until the latter stages of the Ottoman
Empire, civil and religious law were indistinguishable in Muslim
countries. Nationality, unknown to Islam except as membership in the
umma, could not exist in the European sense: [FN72] Islam sufficed for civil as well as religious bond. [FN73]
Sovereignty was a divine reserve and could be possessed by no state;
organs of a state could have no supreme power and functional parameters
depended upon holy writ. [FN74]
There inevitably developed tension between pan-Arab ideology founded in
Muslim concepts and political reality. It began to be felt as religion
gave way to politics in practical dealings with outsiders, and as
European states began to claim vested interests in the Middle East,
interests first defined in the capitulations. [FN75]
The rights of non-Muslims within the Ottoman Empire came to be
determined by secular law and not solely by the words of the Qur'an. [FN76] The law of January 19, 1869 [FN77] began the process of defining Ottoman nationality in modern terms and
with a view to the avoidance of conflict of
nationalities in respect of persons who might be claimed as their
nationals by states beneficiaries of capitulations. [FN78] The westernization and laicization of status was completed with the promulgation of the Turkish nationality law of 1928. [FN79] Yet even today nationality, firmly established *69
in the practice of the governments of states successors to the Ottoman
Empire and caliphate and of other predominantly Muslim postwar
sovereign units, cohabits uneasily with shari'a jurisprudence and the
Muslim, or Arab, solidarity it has commonly evoked. [FN80]
Paul Ghali, in his study of nationality in former Ottoman countries,
juxtaposed a laicized Iraqi concept of nationality and the religious
nationality concept of Ibn Saoud [FN81] which
of all Oriental legislation, has remained the closest to Muslim law.
Based in effect upon religious principles, it has shown itself
welcoming to Muslims and gives substantial importance to filiation, by
which the religion is supposed to be transmitted. It is inspired also
by theories of perpetual allegiance, that Turkey had included in its
law of nationality. [FN82]
Article 7 of its 1926 law would pronounce anathema the Hedjaz native
who, without government consent, entered military service abroad: he
would be subject to banishment. Ghali looked behind statutory drafting
to take account of the fact that Saudi Arabia is entirely Muslim. Then
as now, in Constitutional terms:
The Kingdom of Saudi
Arabia is a sovereign Arab Islamic state with Islam as its religion;
God's Book and the Sunnah of His Prophet, God's prayers and peace be
upon him, are its constitution, Arabic is its language and Riyadh is
its capital. [FN83]
Citizens are to pay allegiance to the King in accordance with the holy
Koran and the tradition of the Prophet, in submission and obedience, in
times of ease and difficulty, fortune and adversity. [FN84]
If the Islamic concept of umma engendered resistance to the
introduction of the civil-law notion of statehood and nationality after
World War I, [FN85]
following World War II independence and partition of India and the
massive migration of Muslims to Western countries necessitated a
re-evaluation by Muslims generally of what constituted the Islamic
Nation. The implicit state of hostility with a dar al-harb would be
logically incompatible for of members of a minority community of
believers, citizens of a non-Muslim state.
*70
The disappearance of the institution of the Caliphate, the emergence of
many Muslim States--articulated as Islamic (Saudi Arabia, Iran,
Pakistan, Sudan, Afghanistan) or as secular democracies (Turkey, Egypt,
Malaysia, Indonesia)--and the rapid globalization of the nation state
as a result of decolonization have allowed many new terms to be
invented within Muslim discourses on international relations. These are
words like dar-ul-aman (house of order) and dar-ul-kufr (house of unbelief). [FN86]
Other nomenclature for distinguishing relationships between Muslims and
non-Muslims included dar al-ahd (house of peace treaty), dar al-iman
(house of true faith), all juxtaposed to ahl al-shawka, people in
rebellion. One can detect from these concepts the constant reminder of
difference and apartness; but it was accepted at least by some that a
community of Muslims in the West could still be part of the dar
al-Islam. Islam might, through its disdain of kingship and its
procedures for appointment of a caliph or imam and its provisions for
consultation be consistent, philosophically, with democracy; but one
might question whether it could tolerate an outcome in any consultative
or elective process that differed from the Islamic and Islamist ideal. [FN87]
Ibn Taymiyya wrote of ikhtiyar, popular election of rulers, but in a
sense that must be deduced from its context and times. Political and
diplomatic affinity might be matters of convenience; again Taymiyya was
influenced by his early experience of the Mongol invasion, and in a way
that foreshadowed the disdain of Qutb (1906-1966) and Mawdudi
(1903-1979) for Muslim rulers who compromised with their interpretation
of antiquity he would find defects in their embrace of Islam
(specifically, their failure to apply shari'a) sufficient to deem them
kufr. Further, Islam demanded perpetual allegiance; and there could be
conflict between the demands of Islam and those of a secular state, and
more especially of a jurisdiction which does not admit of Islamic
personal law. If apostasy by the Muslim is tantamount to treason, then even a
tenuous link to the Muslim Nation may, in the mind of the believer,
create obligations which could conflict with those to state of
residence. A dual national may be charged with treason by one country
for acts undertaken on *71 behalf of the other; [FN88] an expatriate remains under obligation to the country of nationality. [FN89]
The notion, most notably in traditional English [FN90] and Islamic [FN91]
law, of nationality as allegiance serves to highlight its aspect as
obligation. The more recent recognition of nationality as a human right
has, in the light of judicial condemnation of Nazi expatriations and
denaturalizations [FN92] led to attempts to restrain states' capacity to revoke nationality unilaterally. [FN93] External limits on state freedom of action in this regard are however limited; [FN94] it is the giving of effect to that action transnationally that is principally in question. [FN95]
In the territories of Israel and Palestine (i.e., the settlements) one
may object to the use of religion as criterion for immigration and
nationality, although that is *72 not unprecedented in law, [FN96] and even less so in fact. Not infrequently have countries divested emigrants and expellees of nationality [FN97] even to the point of rendering them stateless, although the Chagos Islanders [FN98]
case may be an avatar of change at least insofar as mass
denaturalization and expatriation is concerned. While it is
questionable whether sovereignty depends upon external recognition for its existence, [FN99]
widespread recognition may stabilize and reinforce it. The overthrow of
a recognized state may so threaten the international order as to lead
to foreign intervention, as in the case of Iraq's invasion of Kuwait.
Governments which supported the British defense of the Falklands
invasion were similarly concerned not to allow as precedent a reward of
sovereignty for armed aggression and conquest.
The operation of
parallel Islamic or Arab notions of allegiance and ethnic solidarity is
illustrated by its transposition into law in the provisional
constitution of March 5, 1958 of the United Arab Republic: "Shall be
considered as an 'Arab Citizen' any member of the Arab Nation, even if
he does not reside in an Arab country and does not bear the nationality
of any Arab State." [FN100] This article reflects, however, a commingling of modern political ideas with those of Islam:
The notion of nationality did not exist in Islamic law; it did not
exist because it could not exist: neither the person, as individual,
subject of law, nor the State in the classic sense of the term, was
considered or regulated by Islamic law. Only the concept of community,
umma, covered, implicitly, the two notions." [FN101]
*73
Still, it has had an echo elsewhere: "Any Arab habitually resident in
Jordan for more than fifteen consecutive years may obtain Jordanian
nationality if he renounces his original nationality by a written statement, provided his country's law permits it . . . ." [FN102]
Thus Abd-el-Hakim could claim in 1902, "it is, in effect, Islam, that
constitutes in some manner the common fatherland . . . of which Muslim
States are only parts, and there has never been a diplomatic
representation of one Muslim State to another", an argument
nevertheless rejected by the Seine tribunal. [FN103]
Abd-el Hakim was trying to articulate a common status of members of the
Muslim Nation, and specifically of the inhabitants of Morocco and
Tunisia. The court ruled, however, that "the Treaty of Bardo further
compromised Qur'anic law, subjected Tunisia to European international
law and specifically established a Tunisian nationality." [FN104] Professor Elgeddawy restates the point: Islam knows no nationality and there is not, consequently, any "Muslim nationality" . [FN105]
Muslim countries have adopted Western notions of sovereignty and
nationality to the degree necessary and convenient for participation in
the world community of states. This was perhaps an inevitable result of
the encounter between Muslim societies and Western political thought
beginning in the late Eighteenth Century. [FN106]
The loyalty of their present and former citizens may reflect, however,
less the international-law aspect of nationality than the religious
concept of membership in Dar al-Islam.
Notwithstanding (political) concern on the part of governments of Muslim
states to legitimize their power by reference to
Islamic doctrine and authority inherited or transmitted from the
Prophet, in fact the enacted nationality laws of Muslim states, like
those of all states, manifest secular state interests which may well be
adverse to those of other countries, Muslim or not. Whatever a state's
pretensions with respect to perpetual allegiance, its coercive power
can only be enforced abroad with the consent of other states, by
voluntary compliance of individuals, by threat of force or by terror.
Nationality was and is the only means that Arab states individually or
collectively *74
could establish legal bonds with their citizens cognizable in
international law. Laicization of nationality in the Middle East was
inevitable following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire as independent
states developed competing interests.
Laicization, however, went
only so far. There remains an Islamic approach to territory and
territoriality and a collective appreciation of the "Muslim world":
loss of Islamic territory is only with difficulty contemplated in
Muslim thought. [FN107]
On the other hand, international law has no answer to the question of
whether open-market purchases of property by private parties, as
distinct from governmental purchase from another state [FN108] or exchange by treaty, [FN109]
can serve as a basis for change in sovereign title through
self-determination of the inhabitants or otherwise. Furthermore, while
recognition by other states may facilitate participation in
international political and economic affairs, it is
questionable whether recognition is relevant to the personal status of
the inhabitants of the unrecognized state. [FN110]
On the other hand, irregularities in the formation of a state and the
incorporation of territory may detract from the state's status as actor
under international and diplomatic law, as in the cases of Rhodesia and
the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. Procedural defects, human
rights violations and democratic deficit in incorporation of territory
may be cured by passage of time. Governmental admissions concerning the
diplomatic machinations leading to incorporation of Hawaii [FN111] into the United States and the repudiation of treaty obligations towards Native Americans [FN112]
posed no threat to the established legal order and the sovereign
prerogatives of the U.S. federal government. Those incidents occurred,
however, long ago; the more recent forced incorporation by Indonesia of
East Timor was unrecognized except by Australia and its subsequent
independence had less to do with non-recognition than domestic
Indonesian politics.
Arab grievances have included arguments on the
invalidity of Israeli land purchases, seizures and incorporation,
taking land out of Arab hands. It *75 was a Zionist aim to approach sovereignty through open-market purchases of land; [FN113] the Jewish National Fund was established following the Fifth Zionist Congress in Basel in 1901 for that purpose. The Fund [FN114] and various private interests [FN115] have undertaken land-purchase and
construction projects, sometimes in competition
with Arab-financed organizations engaged in similar strategic projects
to influence the ethnic character of East Jerusalem neighborhoods.
Overall within Israel and the Territories not only access to finance
but both jurisprudence and administrative practice disadvantaged Arab
inhabitants and brought about demographic change. [FN116]
The problems of addressing demographic changes, subsequent good-faith
arms-length transactions, longstanding vested interests and offsetting
reciprocal claims may overwhelm moral arguments. There are parallels
with other population flights and property losses in ethnic conflicts,
notably in Cyprus and the Balkans. The status of individuals and their
descendants, involuntarily displaced, is equally unclear. Historically,
individual hardship and ancestral grievances give way to national
interests. Population movements [FN117]
after World Wars I and II, the repeated displacement of persons at
times of racial and religious strife in Asia and Africa and the
transfer of population during the Cyprus crisis of 1974 have yielded no
helpful legal rules. Nationality and "right of return" [FN118] constitute further thorny issues.
Beyond sovereignty and title to land, there is no international forum
available to hear complaints about the definitional scope of a nation's
nationality *76 law, [FN119] even if other states are not bound to accept that determination (at least with respect to persons who did not acquire the
nationality in infancy) for all purposes. [FN120]
Greek practice between the end of World War II and 1999 was to revoke
the Greek nationality of its ethnic Slav and ethnic Turkish nationals
who resided abroad and whom it deemed had "abandoned" Greek domicile. [FN121] On the other hand, the decision of the Divisional Court, London in the Chagos Islanders case, [FN122]
considering the situation of involuntary displacement of population as
a deliberate act of state with the evacuated land kept vacant (except
for Diego Garcia, leased to the U.S. military), held that nationality
and residence rights (in the event, relating to former inhabitants of
the British Indian Ocean Territory) could not be abridged and that the
enforced absence from their land by the Islanders did not diminish
their collective rights in respect of it. The argument over the nature
of population movements into and out of Palestine, and from member
states of the Arab League to Israel in 1947 and later, has found no
consensus. [FN123] There is dispute over the circumstances of the post-1947 departure of refugees from Israeli territory [FN124] although the recent opening of archives may lead to some *77
consensus among independent historians. There remain problems with
establishing a blanket rule that could be applied to refugees generally
and a likely refusal of Israel to alter the character of the
established state and its social order. As Yoav Gelber has said,
hindering any settlement of the grievances of displaced Palestinians
and their Arab supporters is the historical difference in treatment of
refugees: while European displacement of ethnic groups has been
permanent and European refugees have generally been resettled, previous
war refugees in the Middle East commonly returned home at the end of
hostilities. The European--and Israeli-- expectation is compromise and
concession; the Palestinian is "justice" without regard to compromise
or counterclaim [FN125]
and this without regard to issues of security. This underlines what,
with regard to the occupied territories, Professor Weiler has called
the "cleavage between legal norms and reality." [FN126]
Arguments on both sides tend to be tainted with polemic and theological
arguments, neither of which have external juridical value. A further
unresolved issue is whether the use of terror can lead to rights and,
more specifically, whether concessions granted by states under duress
may ever be vested. [FN127]
A review of the public legal argument reveals the inability to come to
grips with the irreconcilable world views of the two sides; much of the
record is tainted with error of fact and error of law. [FN128]
The problem with many pronouncements of the U.N. General Assembly and
the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the
Palestinian People is their apparent contrivance for the purpose of
condemning Israel rather than to establish generally applicable
equitable rules or to consider what is diplomatically feasible. [FN129] Another is the identity of the universe of persons within the meaning *78 of "Palestinian People" . [FN130] Parallel conflicts of
national inclusion due to population movement
exist at other sites of Muslim territorial controversy, including
Cyprus and Kosovo. While most Arabs resident in Israel at the time of
independence, and their descendants, possess Israeli nationality, there
are several other categories of Palestinian Arabs: (1) residents of
East Jerusalem who have elected Israeli nationality (about 8,000 in
number), [FN131] (2)
Palestinian nationals, documented by the Palestinian Authority under
criteria established in Oslo II, (3) other Palestinian Arabs, resident
in the West Bank and Gaza, possessing either refugee documents or
Jordanian passports that do not denote citizenship, (4) stateless
Palestinians resident in other countries, (5) natives of Palestine who
have acquired the nationality of a foreign country.
It is worth
pointing out the tension between "group rights" furthering the
collective interests of the group as a whole, and individual rights
including the right to dissociate oneself from the group. This is an
issue addressed frequently with respect to indigenous peoples. [FN132]
In the context of Palestine the maintenance of obstacles to integration
and the perpetuation of poverty and refugee-camp living have furthered
the interests of at least some political actors. Meanwhile, the
departure from the Levant and Palestine of large numbers of Christians
has altered the demography. [FN133]
Individual migrants and their families have a right to opt for
assimilation or to retention of their culture of origin; this is
implicit both in European Union law [FN134] and international *79 refugee law [FN135]
even if no state is obliged to accord its nationality to any particular
individual. It is true whether they are classed as minorities or not.
Still, given a new sensitivity as regards forced assimilation some
classes of minorities have achieved recognition for their claim to
retention of culture, language and religion. Specific commitments were
made in the Minorities Treaties, [FN136]
and domestic legislation and international human rights law have
strengthened those claims. Such voluntary, if politically driven,
action is exemplified by the Welsh Language Act, 1993 in Britain and
the Native Hawaiian Family-Based Education Centers law and the
Declaration of Policy with respect to Native American Languages [FN137]
in the United States. However, recently-arrived immigrant groups, as
aliens, would seem to lack a legal claim to state protection as
minorities except insofar as anti-discrimination laws otherwise apply.
The aspirations and group allegiance of each category may differ.
Arabs, including Palestinians, settled in the West have limited rights
abroad to public subsidy in maintaining their ancestral identity.
Entitlement to external aid for preservation as a distinct group is
particularly unclear in respect of recent, voluntary movements of
individuals who have made personal choices with a view to economic
advancement and not as refugees. This is all the more so where the
cultural group retains a stable existence in a country of origin. [FN138] Yet, such groups of migrants, one or two generations
removed, may create a distinct hybrid culture
within the receiving state that, itself, could be self-sustaining and
in due course support a claim to certain moral rights, even that of
preservation as a new, distinct community. This may be so of the Turks
in Germany about whom there is a substantial literature. It has a
possible echo also with respect to certain Europeanized and hence
liberalized communities grown foreign to the culture of the country of *80
origin and, perhaps, less susceptible to irredentist tendencies
developing there, arguably the case of many Algerians in France. There
is a parallel argument for those who have been beneficiaries of
political refuge based on facts of colonial history and independence
conflicts, such as the Moluccans evacuated to the Netherlands in 1951 [FN139] and the Hmong evacuated to the United States from Southeast Asia following the Vietnam War. [FN140]
The issue here is the responsibility of the state for a group that it
has, in the past, co-opted for its own political and military purposes.
Notably, there has been within the Palestinian rhetoric occasional
reference to a potential similar obligation of Western nations towards
Israeli Jews in the light of events between 1933 and 1948, although
this rhetoric ignores the Jews who fled to Israel from Arab countries.
Complicating the equation is the fact that the destination countries of
most non-Arab migrants in the period prior to 1970 accorded nationality
on the basis of jus soli: locally-born offspring would have local
nationality. With the exception of Jordan, most countries of residence of Palestinian migrants did not allow many Palestinians to acquire their nationality.
Transplanting an alien group does not necessarily divert the allegiance of the group's members to the new sovereign; [FN141]
and indeed it implies no more than asylum and safe haven. That the
state has an obligation to a group of aliens does not necessarily
translate into a mutual wish for social and political integration. Such
decisions are made based on a combination of social, economic,
political and legal factors. Whatever the standards established in a
relevant country for naturalization and for the grant of nationality to
offspring of immigrants, it will be observed that persons of different
national origin have differing propensities to exercise their option.
Whether individuals have entered a country as asylum seekers,
presumptively temporary residents, or under formal labor recruitment
programs or by way of supra-national market integration, long-term stay
inevitably reduces the chance of repatriation, particularly of
offspring. A 1993 sociological study of Dutch naturalization
motivations [FN142] shed some light on specific cultural aspects of nationality choices, especially with respect to nationals of Muslim countries. *81
Out of this study it appears that relevant elements of individual
choice in naturalization decisions are: (1) eligibility for family
reunification; (2) eligibility for social welfare benefits; (3) access
to the benefits of European Union non-discrimination legislation; (4)
residual family and cultural ties with the nationality of origin
among generations born in the receiving country; (5) dual nationality
rules in sending and receiving countries; (6) specific cultural
implications of rupturing the link with the country of origin. The last
category includes allusion to the status of the Muslim state as proxy
for the Khilafa: Islam knows no state, but the state may claim to act
its name and to demand the perpetual allegiance of the faithful. In
that light, violation of Islam's duty of allegiance is both treason and
apostasy. There may well be a disparity between Islamic thought and the
expectations of the Muslim or Arab community in the East and the true
allegiance of the Westernized Muslim, citizen of a Western country.
Apostasy Islam's stringent prohibition on departure
from the faith, and the penalties imposed, have meant that conversions
are few and collective abandonment of Islam particularly rare. [FN143]
Most dissociation of Islam with territory has been the result of
population movements, notably in Europe. The classical Islamic
imposition of the death penalty for apostasy [FN144]
has been attenuated at particular times and in particular places. The
Ottoman Empire, under pressure from the Christian West, came to
tolerate instances of abandonment of Islam for Christianity. [FN145] Secular India, like the secular West, protects personal autonomy in matters of religion. [FN146] The
mixed tribunals of a prior era also enforced freedom of conscience:
*82
The prohibition enunciated at a time now long past forbidding Muslims
to abjure their faith under penalty of death can not be considered
effective today in Egypt; especially since the promulgation of the
country's Constitution, which guarantees all the inhabitants of the
territory absolute freedom of conscience, as a legal hindrance to
freely converting from one religion to another . . . . [FN147]
Such liberty is, however, anathema to the classical Islamic regime
given the shari'a equation of statal and religious allegiance. This has
given rise to harsh sentences in the secular courts of such states. [FN148] Apostasy applies only to individuals who have accepted Islam or who are of Muslim paternity [FN149];
however, laws of blasphemy have been applied more broadly, indeed
extraterritorially. To some extent they may be used to suppress, or to
seek to suppress, dissent or divergence from the orthodox norm, and to
reject compromise. [FN150] At least in principle, potential prosecution for apostasy may ground a petition for political asylum. [FN151]
Insofar as uncompromising, illiberal notions of religious hierarchy,
preference and supremacy over norms common in non-Islamic jurisdictions
are sought, recognition and enforcement in Western legal systems today
are bound to come into conflict with ordre public. In a predominantly
Muslim *83 country such as Egypt and Sudan, the norms of the "better religion" may be applied in
conflict of laws cases as a matter of judicial
interpretation. Aldeeb Abu-Sahlieh explains this: "According to Islam,
religions are classed by degrees of preference as follows: Islam,
Judaism, Christianity, Zoroastrianism . . . and in last place
polytheists. The minor with one Christian and one Jewish parent is
deemed Jewish." [FN152]
It should be noted that such a preference for the dominant religion of
the ruling and judging class existed too in the imperial era, notably
in relation to validity of marriage. [FN153] In general, the native of a colony, [FN154] of a protectorate, [FN155] of a mandate [FN156] or of a trusteeship territory [FN157] possessed a separate and inferior personal status.
It goes without saying that in addition to creating particular problems
in cross-border child abduction cases such assignment of religion by
the state ignores the conflict with Jewish law, under which religion is
only acquired through the mother or by conversion; [FN158] but here we are concerned with the effects of Islamic public policy. This is illustrated by the Zoghby-Hallaq [FN159] *84
case. The Hallaq spouses, Greek Catholics married according to the
rites of their faith, separated, and the daughter remaining with her
mother. To avoid his child support obligations the father converted to
Islam. The shari'a court awarded him custody of the child, declaring
that the child must follow whichever of her parents professed the
"better religion", and that she risked learning from her mother
elements of apostasy. The Greek Catholic court pronounced
judgment in the opposite sense; the Egyptian Government was left to
intervene. Although Law 462/1955 had suppressed shari'a courts,
Egyptian civil courts scarcely changed the orientation of Egyptian law
in the matter: Islamic norms would pre-empt any others in direct
conflict with them, and the court adopted the shari'a decision. [FN160]
Canon law, [FN161]
like Islamic law, punishes apostasy and to the degree that the state
adopts religious law as its own, the objections of ordre public and
fraude à la loi would seem to merge, disallowing resort to a rejected
norm. Most Muslim and many African countries, following the patrilineal
sense of Islamic and much customary law, have ignored the principle of
gender equality that has elsewhere become an important factor in the
assignment of nationality status. [FN162]
It is excluded in Islam that a Muslim woman should, in the absence of
his conversion to Islam, marry a non-Muslim man, or a Muslim man any
but a Muslim woman or one whose religion possesses a scripture
predating the Muslim era, i.e. a Christian or Jew, or a Zoroastrian. [FN163]
As a result, one cannot expect to find case law of Muslim countries
recognizing such marriages and their effects. On the other hand,
Islamic courts, it appears, will not look behind conversions of
convenience intended at validating *85 marriages, any more than they will do so with relation to divorces. [FN164] One may readily join the umma, but one attempts to leave it at one's
peril.
The recognition in particular laws, explicitly [FN165] or implicitly, [FN166] of Muslim solidarity and unified "citizenship" is a reflection of cultural and sociological fact [FN167]
rather than legal rights actually afforded to those within its purview.
It may reflect as well the concept, principal object of review here, of
inalienability of Muslim land. The distinction between nationality of a
dar al-Islam and of a dar al-harb has significant meaning to the Muslim
migrant. [FN168] The law
of the dar al-Islam but not that of the dar al-harb will implicitly
recognize the religious distinction which, even if it is absent from
the nationality code itself, must be inherent in the minds of those who
interpret it. For this reason social fact melds into jurisprudence
without being easily subject to objective analysis, although Elgeddawy
and others have attempted to do so in the context of private
international law.
It is beyond the scope of this study to do more
than suggest in this connection that the relationship between Muslim
migrants and Islamic states of origin differs from that of Muslim
migrants with pluralist states of origin having large Muslim
populations, such as India, Lebanon and Nigeria. For some the Muslim
state may be a proxy for the Islamic Nation, and rejection of the
claims of perpetual allegiance tantamount to apostasy may account for *86 reluctance by some migrants to seek the nationality of a non-Muslim
state. [FN169]
The 1995 study by Sahil and Ostby for EUROSTAT of European
naturalizations showed different propensities to naturalize by migrants
of different states of origin, but did not draw firm conclusions as to
the reasons. [FN170] One
can only note that there is an apparent reluctance of some migrants
from certain states to sever links with the land of birth, and an
apparent division of allegiance between economic interests in the
receiving state and the economic and cultural-religious interests of
the sending state. Such tendencies may be reinforced by both law and
politics in the two states concerned. Western nations have responded
variously with respect to naturalization and to grant of nationality at
birth. Yet, the matter of allegiance in the sense of personal loyalty,
linked in this case to religion, is one of human rights and personal
autonomy for which no criticism is permissible. In the absence of
judicial transparency in most countries of origin we may be left to
make assumptions from statistics and to generalize from occasional
insights in Western legal materials. [FN171]
Conclusion Conflict between religious and civil law
and activism to bring the latter into conformity with the former is
scarcely unique to the Muslim experience. Neither is the perversity of
democracy in matters of human rights and legitimacy of government, [FN172] an issue of some concern since increased
reliance upon shari'a in the Islamic world is
bound to produce greater conflict with the West: in private and public
international law, human rights law and, indeed, refugee law. . . . [FN173] Insofar as Islam asserts a jealous territoriality and *87
its most politically active or politically successful adherents derive
an anti-Western mission from shari'a, the foundation for that mission
will be found among the legal principles discussed here. No higher
norms, no jus gentium from outside shari'a will be admitted. Discourse
is further limited by the fact that the development of those
international law norms postdates by many centuries the freezing of
shari'a norms. Views of Orientalists, [FN174]
international lawyers and diplomats are scarcely likely to be seen as
relevant by those whose convictions most need to be influenced. On the
other hand, nothing impedes the introduction into Islamic practice of
international cooperation and of new principles not inconsistent with
accepted doctrine, including the criminal prosecution of terrorism. [FN175]
The law is, ultimately, founded upon consensus and upon acceptance of
the juridical structure by which it is interpreted. Islam has long
accommodated situations of military insufficiency and minority status
by compromise and patience. Islamists have countenanced learning the
scientific and technological discoveries of the West from non-Islamic
sources until such time as qualified observant Muslim teachers are
available. [FN176] Insofar as those elements
that undertake terrorism find theoretical support
in the principles discussed here, it may be that a universal commitment
to treat terrorism as piracy could be effective. For that, however, the
potential counter-weapon of oil may need to be neutralized: in the
absence of an adoption of antitrust theory, no principle of
international law will exist to counter a refusal to trade in oil
promoted, should they control substantial sources of petroleum, by
Islamic literalists committed to opposing Western presence in Muslim
land.
The conundrum for the West is that just as there are those
who would use the democratic process to extinguish democracy there are
those would declaim human rights violations by others while themselves
committing them. Militant Islamists, and indeed governments of Muslim
states holding to Islamic perspectives of allegiance and apostasy, may
demand the loyalty of expatriate Muslims. The 1951 Refugee Convention
provides for an exception to refugee status in the case of violators of
underlying Convention principles. [FN177]
Constitutional norms are most at risk when the state and its
institutions are under threat; this is the essence of the terror
paradigm. The present *88
struggle is between the West and its "intrusive surrogates", Israel and
those perceived as client rulers, even if Muslim, in Arab land--and a
disparate community including some in the Muslim diaspora with history
and claims perhaps partly invented (in the sense of Benedict Anderson [FN178] and Ernest Gellner [FN179]), but a community solidified nonetheless in opposition and
in frustration. That Islam may not have a precise,
defined concept of Muslim land is unlikely to prevent use of the
concept as a focus of resentment and reaction. Gelber correctly detects
no real room for accommodation between those who claim vested interests
and historical rights and those who seek a vaguely defined "justice"
and who direct their anger most particularly against the West. [FN180]
Repetitive use of terms such as inalienable, inviolable and divine may
frustrate, as perhaps they are intended to, dialog and attempts at
compromise. Revisionist history, an expansionist, doctrinal notion of
Muslim land and abandonment to the extremist tendency within Islam of
the task of defining foreign-policy issues leave little scope for
Western and International law as they developed in the second half of
the twentieth century. For those, "Islamic land" includes all of
Palestine and all of Israel. Should that territory be regained other
formerly Muslim lands, less urgent targets now, could be claimed.
Extremism within the Israeli polity completes the blockage. Within
Israel, inherently discriminatory provisions disadvantage not only
alien Palestinian Arabs but to a significant extent citizen Israeli
Arabs in access to land, and effectively, to the full panoply of
citizens' rights. These may, at least, be negotiable as part of the
democratic process as they are elements of civil, not religious, law.
They have not heretofore been part of the Palestine discourse except
implicitly, insofar as there is demand for repatriation of refugees and restoration of
property. Muslim adherence to principles of infallible, unalterable
shari'a: persistent jihad, irreversible waqf, punitive irtidad and a
concept of sovereignty grounded in religion pose intractable problems
for a West committed to personal autonomy and civil management of
family relationships and property title, and opposed in general to
perpetual trusts and religious intrusion in public affairs. To the
extent that Islamic-law notions alien to Western understanding motivate
not only Islamists but (if indeed they do) a silent majority of Arabs
and Muslims, Western precedent, Western argument and International law
norms seen as extensions of "Western" law lose force. The commonly
accepted norms of human rights reject, *89
however, relativism and claim universality: to that degree they are
equally as uncompromising as the dictates of shari'a. The Palestine
conflict is in that light only a microcosm of the broader one between
Islam and the West.
[FNa1]. Andrew Grossman
is a retired U.S. Foreign Service Officer who served in Seoul, Abidjan,
London, Tehran, Algiers and Geneva. He holds the degrees of B.A. in
Economics (Clark), LL.B. (Columbia), M.A. in L.I.S. (University College
London) and Licencié en droit européen et international, Maitre &
Docteur en droit (Louvain) and is a member of the New York and District
of Columbia Bars. He lives in London where he writes on private
international law issues, especially in the fields of nationality, bankruptcy and tax.
[FN1]. Rania Maktabi, The
Lebanese Census of 1932 Revisited. Who are the Lebanese?, 26 Brit. J.
Middle E. Stud. 219 (1999). For an interesting comment about Rashid
Rida's argument that Lebanon and Syria were not part of the dar
al-Islam, see Khaled Abou el Fadl, Islamic Law and Muslim Minorities:
The Juristic Discourse on Muslim Minorities from the Second/Eighth to
the Eleventh/Seventeenth Centuries, 1 Islamic L. & Soc. 141, 185
(1994).
[FN2]. Joseph Courbage,
Reshuffling the Demographic Cards in Israel/Palestine, 28 J. Palestine
Stud. 21 (1999). The CIA World Factbook 2001 reports the Muslim
proportion of the population of the Gaza Strip as 98.7% and of the West
Bank as 75% (inclusive of Israeli settlements).
[FN3]. Abdul Rahman Abbad, The Theology of the Land: An Islamic Perspective, 9/10 Al-Liqa J. 71, 75 (1997).
[FN4]. See Mahmood
Monshipouri, Reform and the Human Rights Quandary: Islamists vs.
Secularists, 41 J. Church & State 445 (1999); see also Natan
Lerner, Group Rights and Discrimination in International Law (1991).
[FN5]. There are also tort law implications. See Jenco v. Islamic Republic of Iran, 154 F. Supp. 2d 27 (D.D.C. 2001); Ungar v. Palestinian Authority, 153 F.Supp. 2d 76 (D.R.I. 2001); Sutherland v. Islamic Republic of Iran, 151 F. Supp. 2d 27 (D.D.C. 2001); Eisenfeld v. Islamic Republic of Iran, 127 F. Supp. 2d 1 (D.D.C. 2000); Elahi v. Islamic Republic of Iran, 124 F. Supp. 2d 97 (D.D.C. 2000); Anderson v. Islamic Republic of Iran, 90 F. Supp. 2d 107 (D.D.C. 2000); Cicippio v. Islamic Republic of Iran, 18 F. Supp. 2d 62 (D.D.C. 1998); Flatow v. Islamic Republic of Iran, 999 F. Supp. 1 (D.D.C. 1998); Doe v. Islamic Salvation Front, 993 F. Supp. 3 (D.D.C. 1998); Sean D. Murphy, Contemporary Practice of the United States Relating to International Law, 93 Am. J. Int'l L. 470 (1999); Richard K. Milin, Suing Terrorists and Their Private and State Supporters, N.Y.L.J., Oct. 29, 2001 at S1.
[FN6]. Khaled Hroub, Hamas: Political Thought and Practice 38 (2001).
[FN7]. See generally Sami Awad
Aldeeb Abu-Sahlieh, Les mouvements islamistes et les droits de l'homme
(1998) (selective and misleading use of Qur'anic verses). As one
particular example, one must consider in each case whether a user of
the term "occupied territories" is referring to territories occupied by
Israel since 1967 or "all of Palestine" including the State of Israel.
[FN8]. Donna E. Arzt, Heroes or Heretics: Religious Dissidents Under Islamic Law, 14 Wis. Int'l L.J. 349 (1996) (discussing international human rights instruments).
[FN9]. Sayyid Qutb, Milestones 62 (1991).
[FN10]. See Ann Elizabeth
Mayer, Law and Religion in the Middle East, 35 Am. J. Comp. L. 127
(1987), which argues that "[a]gainst a different historical background,
the borrowing of Western law might not have become associated in the
popular mind with Western imperialism, setting the stage for the
contemporary association of Islamic law with nationalistic reactions to
the former."
[FN11]. This is not a new
issue and it is scarcely limited to Muslims: In re Jensen, (1976) 67
D.L.R.(3d) 514 (Can.), 69 I.L.R. 194 (naturalization oath); Roncarelli
v. Duplessis, [1959] S.C.R. 121 (use of public facilities); Watch Tower
Bible and Tract Society v. Mount Roskill Borough, [1959] N.Z.L.R. 1236
(S.Ct.) (reversing finding of "subversive"); Walsh v. Lord Advocate,
[1956] 3 All E.R. 129 (H.L. 1956) (conscription); Adelaide Company of
Jehovah's Witnesses v. Commonwealth, [1943] 67 C.L.R. 116 (Austl.)
(prejudicial to conduct of war). For a case that did involve a Muslim, see In re Kassas, 788 F. Supp. 993 (M.D. Tenn. 1992) (naturalization refused to petitioner who would not "bear arms against an Islamic country").
[FN12]. Specifically to
Kashmir, where the issues relate to demands for Islamic governance and
merger with a Muslim state (i.e., the "Islamic Nation").
[FN13]. See Harold J. Laski,
Law and the State, in Studies in Law and Politics 237, 246-47 (1932),
reprinted in The Pluralist Theory of the State 197, at 205 (Paul Q.
Hirst ed., 1989).
[FN14]. See Colin Imber,
Ebu's-su'ud: The Islamic Legal Tradition 139-63 (1997); Joseph Schacht,
An Introduction to Islamic Law 125-26 (1986); Amy Singer, A Note on
Land and Identity: From Ze'amet to Waqf, in New Perspectives on
Property and Land in the Middle East, 161, 161-73 (Roger Owen ed.,
2000); Jeffrey A. Schoenblum, The Role of Legal Doctrine in the Decline of the Islamic Waqf: a Comparison With the Trust, 32 Vand. J. Transnat'l L. 1191 (1999);
Miriam Hoexter, Huquq Allah and Huquq Al-Ibad as Reflected in the Waqf
Institution, 19 Jerusalem Stud. Arabic & Islam 133 (1995); Aapeli
Saarisalo, The Turkish Waqf, 19 Studia Orientalia No. 10 (1954).
[FN15].
India: Mussalman Wakf Validating Act, No. 6 of 1913; Mussalman Wakf
Validating Act, No. 32 of 1930. The North American Islamic Trust was
established in 1971 by the Muslim Students Association of the U.S. and
Canada to serve as umbrella organization for holding waqf assets of
Islamic communities in North America. Four awqaf (or charities recorded
as such) appear among the organizations registered with the Charity
Commission for England and Wales.
[FN16]. E.g., Abul Fata Mahomed Ishak v. Russomoy Dhur Chowdhry, (1894) 22 I.A. 76 (P.C.).
[FN17]. Thus East Pakistan
State Acquisition and Tenure Act 1950 (Act XXVII of 1951) (control of
land rents); Province of East Pakistan v. Mehdi Ali Kahn, [1958] 10
D.L.R. 96 (Can.); Jibendra Kishore v. Province of East Pakistan, P.L.D.
1959 S.C. 387 (Pak.) 9; Muhammad Nazmul Hoque, Critique of the Law of
Waqf in Bangladesh (1982) (unpublished thesis, School of Oriental and
African Studies) (on file with author).
[FN18]. Timur Kuran, The
Provision of Public Goods under Islamic Law: Origins, Contributions,
and Limitations of the Waqaf System (2001) (unpublished Research Paper
No. C01-13), (on file USC Center for Law, Economics & Organization); Decree of 1854 of Mehmet Ali, Pasha of Egypt 1806-1847.
[FN19]. Le waqf dans le monde musulman contemporain (XIXe-XXe siècles) 11 (Faruk Bilici ed., 1994) (author's translation).
[FN20]. Covenant (Mithaq) of
the Islamic Resistance Movement, Aug.18, 1988, (Hamas Covenant), art.
11; Andrea Nüsse, Muslim Palestine: The Ideology of Hamas 47-48 (1998)
(citing Filastin al-Muslima, April 1990 at 25).
[FN21]. But see also Imad
ad-din al-Isfahani, Conquête de la Syrie et de la Palestine par Saladin
92-101 (Henri Massé trans., 1972) (conquest of Jerusalem in 1187 C.E.).
[FN22]. A. Ben Shemesh,
Taxation in Islam 24 (1965) (translation of Part 7 of Qudama ben Ja'far
(d. circa 932), Kitab al-Kharaj); Paul L. Heck, The Construction of
Knowledge in Islamic Civilization: Qudama b. Ja'far and his Kitab al
kharaj wa-sina'at al-kitaba (2002).
[FN23]. 12 Muhammad ibn
Jarir Tabari, The Battle of al-Qadisiyyah and the Conquest of Syria and
Palestine 191 (Yohanan Friedmann trans., 1992).
[FN24]. Ra Ana Irfan Mahmud, Economic System Under Umar the Great 12-14, 85 (1977).
[FN25]. Abu'l-Hasan
al-Mawardi, Al-Ahkam as-Sultaniyyah [The Laws of Islamic Governance]
227-51 (Asdullah Yate trans., 1996); id. at 248-49 ("Abu As' id
al-Astakhri among many others, is of the opinion that 'Umar, may Allah
be pleased with him, made [the Sawad] a waqf for all the Muslims and
left it in the hands of its (previous) owners in return for the kharaj,
imposed as a mark of their (temporary) purchase and paid as a kind of
rent every year, although the period was not stipulated on account of
the general interest involved"). The Sawad ("black") refers to part of
Iraq.
[FN26]. Emmanuel Sivan, Radical Islam: Medieval Theology and Modern Politics (1985).
[FN27]. Ian Brownlie,
Principles of Public International Law 138-45 (4th ed. 1990); Nguyen
Quoc Dinh et al., Droit international public §§ 317-321 (5th ed. 1994);
see also U.N. Security Council Res. 242, Nov. 22, 1967 ("Emphasizing
the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war ...").
[FN28]. Elihu Lauterpacht, Jerusalem and the Holy Places 19 (1968).
[FN29]. Seminar of Arab Jurists on Palestine, Algiers, Jul. 22-27, 1967, The Palestine Question 203 (1968).
[FN30]. Bernard Lewis, The
Jews of Islam 189-90 (1984) ("conversion of the Arab Jews to Zionism
was a direct result of persecution"); cf. Yusuf al-Qaradowi,
Non-Muslims in the Islamic Society (1985).
[FN31]. On internal
conflicts and ambiguity in the sources of Islamic law, see Mir Wali
Ullah, Muslim Jurisprudence and the Quranic Law of Crimes 3-39 (1982).
[FN32]. Joseph Schacht,
Early Doctrines in Waqf, 60 Dogum Yili Münasebetiyle Fuad Köprülü
armagani 444 (1953); C. Cahen, Réflexions sur le waqf ancien, 14 Studia
Islamica 38 (1961).
[FN33]. Moshe Gil, The
Earliest Waqf Foundations, 57 J. Near E. Stud. 125, 126 (1998); cf.
Sahih Muslim, Book 13, "The Book of Bequests" (Kitab Al-Wasiyya), Book
013, No. 4006: "Umar acquired a land at Khaibar. He came to Allah's
Apostle (may peace be upon him) and sought his advice in regard to
it....."
[FN34]. Qur'an, 8:39-42.
[FN35]. See Bassam Tibi, War
and Peace in Islam, in Islamic Political Ethics 175, 179 (Sohail H.
Hashmi ed., 2002) ("The current dissention about the concept of jihad
dates from the rise of political Islam and the eruption of sectarian
religious strife."); Reuven Firestone, Jihad: The Origin of Holy War in
Islam (1999); Rudolph Peters, Jihad in Classical and Modern Islam
(1995); Alfred Morabia, Le gihad dans l'Islam medieval: le "combat
sacré" des origins au XIIe siècle (1993); Majid Khadduri, War and Peace
in the Law of Islam (1955); al-Mawardi, supra note 25, at 57-97.
[FN36]. Khaled Abou El Fadl, Muslim Minorities and Self-Restraint in Liberal Democracies, 29 Loy. L.A. L. Rev. 1525 (1996).
[FN37]. The constant
juxtaposition of "inalienable" with "rights of the Palestinian people"
would appear to be a politico-diplomatic, rather than a juridical,
statement to the extent that the Israel-PLO Agreement signed at
Washington, Sept. 28, 1995 ("Oslo II") constituted an attempt to
compromise the claims of those same rights in exchange for eventual
sovereign recognition and other benefits. For an analysis of Oslo II,
see Yoram Dinstein, The International Legal Status of the West Bank and
the Gaza Strip--1998, 28 Isr. Y.B. Hum. Rts. 37 (1999). "Inalienable"
has also been used to describe the right of the inhabitants of East
Timor to self-determination, U.N. Security Council Resolution No. 384,
Dec. 22, 1975 1869th mtg.
[FN38]. U.N. Security Council Resolution No. 242, Nov. 22, 1967 1382nd mtg.; No. 338, Oct. 22, 1973 1747th mtg.
[FN39]. Battle of Yarmouk,
Aug. 2, 636. The legitimacy of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus
has not entered this discourse although it has been argued at length
elsewhere.
[FN40]. Gary Goertz &
Paul F. Diehl, Territorial Changes and International Conflict 3-56 (Ch.
2, "A Territorial History of the International System") (1992); compare
comments of Chief Justice Taney in Fleming v. Page, 50 U.S. 603 (1850) and J.J. Burlamaqui, The Principles of Politic Law, Pt. IV, Ch. VIII (1748).
[FN41]. Case concerning East Timor (Portugal v. Australia), 1995 I.C.J. 90 (June 30) (Australia having recognized Indonesian annexation of East Timor).
[FN42].
Compare Julius Stone, Israel and Palestine: Assault on the Law of
Nations (1981) and Henry Cattan, Palestine and International Law
(1973). See also Sharon Korman, The right of Conquest: The Acquisition
of Territory by Force in International Law and Practice (1996).
[FN43]. U.N Conciliation
Commission for Palestine, Absentee Property Law 5710-1950 (5710 No. 20,
4 L.S.I. 68) and amendments (5711 No. 29, 5 L.S.I. 64; 5716 No. 23, 10
L.S.I. 31; 5725 No. 23, 19 L.S.I. 55; 5727 No. 51, 21 L.S.I. 136; 5727
NO. 52, 21 L.S.I. 136); and see Alisa Rubin Peled, Towards autonomy?
The Islamist movement's quest for control of Islamic institutions in
Israel, 55 Middle E.J. 378 (2001); Nachman Tal, The Islamic Movement in
Israel, 2 Strategic Assessment 6 (Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies,
Tel Aviv University), Feb. 2000, available at <http://
www.tau.ac.il/jcss/sa/v2n4p5.html>.
[FN44]. Alexandre Kedar, The Legal
Transformation of Ethnic Geography: Israeli Law and the Palestinian
Landholder 1948-1967, 33 N.Y.U. J. Int'l L. & Pol. 923 (2001);
Question of Palestine: Legal Aspects (Document 4), A compilation of
papers presented at the United Nations seminars on the question of
Palestine in 1980-1986 (UN Doc. 1992); David Kretzmer, The Legal Status
of the Arabs in Israel 49-76 (Ch. 4, "Control of Land") (1990); Daniel
Williams, Another Arab Population Grows Angry at Israel,
Washington Post, Mar. 20, 2002, at A23 (Bedouin land claims); Oren
Yiftachel, "Ethnocracy": The Politics of Judaizing Israel/Palestine, 6
Constellations 364 (1999) (settler society ethno-nationalism).
[FN45]. Hanoch Dagan & Michael A. Heller, The Liberal Commons, 110 Yale L.J. 549 (2001) (intestate succession, partition action, land speculation have diminished Black ownership of agricultural land in the U.S.A.).
[FN46]. Thus, Algerian Ordinance No. 62,020 of Aug. 24, 1962 concerning the protection and the management of vacant properties.
[FN47]. Compare, e.g.,
Agreement between the Government of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
and the Governement of Ireland, April 10, 1998, U.K.-Ir., especially
art. 1(vi) (The two Governments "recognise the birthright of all the
people of Northern Ireland to identify themselves and be accepted as
Irish or British, or both").
[FN48]. But see Izhak
Englard, Law and Religion in Israel, 35 Am. J. Comp. L. 185, 204 (1987)
(noting that secular Zionists have concurred in reception of
traditional Jewish law as a matter of "national renaissance").
[FN49]. Basic Law: Israel
Lands, 5720-1960 No. 31, July 19, 1960, 14 L.S.I. 48 and Israel Lands
Administration Law 5720-1960, No. 33, July 25, 1960, 14 L.S.I. 50. Cf.
Jordanian law of 1973 "for Preventing the Sale of Immoveable Property
to the Enemy", (repealed as to Jordan by Law of 1995) applied also by
the Palestinian Authority to land under their control (Human Rights
Watch Report v. 13, No. 4, Justice Undermined: Balancing Security and
Human Rights in the Palestinian Justice System at 24 (2001)). For prior
law see Abraham Granott (Granovsky), The Land System in Palestine
(1952).
[FN50]. See, e.g., Abu Fadl, Greater and Lesser Jihad, 26 Nida'ul Islam (1999), available at <http://www.islam.org.au>.
[FN51]. Alfred Morabia, Le
Gihad dans l'Islam medieval 337 (1993) (informal translation). Compare
Abul Ala al-Mawdudi, Tafhim al-Qur'an [Towards Understanding the
Qur'an, 1988] 169 (1950) (Jihad is not qital (war); it has wider
connotations embracing every kind of striving in the way of Allah).
[FN52]. Quoted and
translated in Bustami Muhammad Khir, Concept of Sovereignty in
Contemporary Islamic Movements, 1 Encounters 5, 22-23 (1995).
[FN53].
Qutb supra note 9 at 51; Robert Worth, The Deep Intellectual Roots of
Islamic Terror, N.Y. Times, Oct. 13, 2001, at A13 ("A minority Islamic
tradition with a wide following and a deep history.")
[FN54]. Umsalama Muhammad
Salih, The Political Thought of Ibn Taymiyya (1980) (unpublished
thesis, Edinburgh); Sivan, supra note 26 at 21-28, 94-102 ("The genius
of Qutb consisted in his grounding his argument in the thought of a
prominent medieval thinker, Ibn Taymiyya (1268-1328), and of some of
his votaries, through an act of 'creative interpretation,"' Id. at 94).
[FN55]. Barbara Daly
Metcalf, Islamic Revival in British India: Deoband, 1860-1900 (1982);
Celia W. Dugger, Indian Town's Seed Grew Into the Taliban's Code, N.Y.
Times, Feb. 23, 2002, at A3; Julian West & Jo Knowsley, British
Muslims Ordered to Adopt Taliban teachings, Sunday Telegraph (London),
July 27, 1997, at 13 (Deoband adherents, 20% of Britain's 1.5 million
Muslims, "given to issuing fatwas ... regulating tiny details of
behaviour").
[FN56]. Nawaf E. Obaid, The
Power of Saudi Arabia's Islamic Leaders, 6 Middle East Quarterly 51,
(1999); Usha Sanyal, Are Wahhabis Kafirs? Ahmad Riza Khan Barelwi and
His Sword of the Haramayn, in Islamic Legal Interpretation 24 (Muhammed
Khalid Masud et al. eds., 1996). On the Salafiyya, see Michael Scott Doran, Somebody Else's Civil War, 81 Foreign Affairs, Jan.-Feb. 2002, at 106 published by the Council on Foreign Affairs.
[FN57]. Robert Irwin, Is This the Man Who Inspired Bin Laden?, The Guardian (London), Nov. 1, 2001, sec. G2, at 8.
[FN58]. Abou el Fadl, supra note 1.
[FN59]. Gilles Kepel, Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam 23-42 (Anthony F. Roberts trans., 2002).
[FN60]. Peter Ford, Listening for Islam's Silent Majority, Christian Science Monitor, Nov. 5, 2001, at 1. Thus: Executive Order 13224: Blocking
Property and Prohibiting Transactions with Persons who Commit, Threaten
to Commit, or Support Terrorism, 66 Fed. Reg. 49079, Sept. 23, 2001.
[FN61]. Lawrence Rosen, The
Justice of Islam: Comparative Perspectives on Islamic Law and Society
200-15 (2000), Ch. 12, "Islam and Islamic culture in the courts of the
United States"; Michael Detmold, Provocation to Murder: Sovereignty and
Multiculture, 19 Sydney L. Rev. 1 (1997). A defense of shari'a is
scarcely of help in a prosecution for terrorist activity, e.g.: United
States v. Bin Laden, 92 F. Supp. 2d 225 (S.D.N.Y. 2000); United States v. Salameh, 152 F.3d 88 (2d Cir. 1998); People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran v. Department of State 182 F.3d 17 (D.C.C. 1999). On religious defense to civil restraints and criminal prosecution, see Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye, Inc. v. City of Hialeah, 508 U.S. 520 (1993); United States v. Bauer, 84 F.3d 1549 (9th Cir. 1996).
[FN62]. Thus, the
reservations and declarations of states signatories to the Convention
on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women. 1249
U.N.T.S. 13, No. 20378 (1981); and note U.N., International Law
Commission, Report on the Work of its Fifty-third Session (2001),
UNGAOR, 55th Sess., Supp. No. 10 (A/56/10), Chapt. 6, "Reservations to
Treaties" . Article 24 of the 1990 Cairo Declaration of Human Rights,
declares that "All rights and freedoms mentioned in this statement are
subject to the Islamic Shari'a" .
[FN63]. President Mohammad
Khatami, Speech to Iranian-Americans at the United Nations, (Sept. 20,
1998) (reported by the Associated Press, Sept. 20, 1998 at 4:25 p.m.
EDT); Yucel Yesilgoz, Double Standard: The Turkish State and Racist
Violence, in Racist Violence in Europe 179-93 (Tore Björe & Rob
Witte, eds. 1993); Charte nationale algérienne, 1976; Diasporas: A
World of Exiles, Economist, Jan. 2, 2003, at 31.
[FN64]. France-Algeria
Social Security Convention, 1298 U.N.T.S. 25, No. 23722 (1983), art.
42; Baaziz v. Baaziz, Cass. 1e civ., Feb. 17 1982, 72 Rev. crit., 1983,
p. 275, note Lequette (Fr.), 110 Clunet 606 (1983), note Kahn.
(prosecution of Algerian for bigamy); Bambose v. Daniel, [1955] A.C.
107 (P.C., Nig.) (succession of children of nine wives of Nigerian); B
v. B, & D v. C, Cass. 1e civ., Jan. 3, 1980 & Dec. 18, 1979,
1980 Dalloz. Jur., p. 549, obs. Poisson-Drocourt (Fr.); 107 Rev. du
not. belge 514 (1981); R. v. Department of Health, ex parte Misra,
Times Law Rep., Apr. 15, 1995; Estate of Bir, 83 Cal. App. 2d 256, 188 P.2d 499 (1948).
For an exhaustive analysis, see Béatrice Bourdelois, Mariage
polygamique et droit positif français (1993). For a case where the
shari'a rule on child custody was displaced by African customary law
see Cameroon Supreme Court, Case No. 2/L, Oct. 10, 1985, Juridis Info.
1991, No. 8, p. 53, obs. F. Anoukaha, comment Brigitte Djuidje,
Pluralisme législatif cameroonais et droit international privé at 16
(1999). Cf. the doctrine of ordre public atténué in the enforcement of
foreign judgments where the underlying law might, if the case were
being decided on its merits, have conflicted with the enforcing
jurisdiction's public policy, 1 Henri Batiffol & Paul Lagarde,
Droit international privé §§ 360-361 (8th ed. 1993); Bernard Audit,
Droit international privé §§ 309, 466 (1992); Yvon Loussouarn &
Pierre Bourel, Droit international privé §§ 259-261 (5th ed. 1996).
[FN65]. But see Act of
Settlement, 1701 12 & 13 Will. III, c. 2 (Eng): the heir to the
British throne may not be, nor marry, a Roman Catholic.
[FN66]. Cf. Co-operative
Committee on Japanese Canadians v. Attorney General for Canada, [1947]
A.C. 87. A total of 3,964 persons of Japanese race, including Canadian
nationals, were deported from Canada beginning May 31, 1946; Klapprott v. United States, 335 U.S. 601 (1949) (a German American Bund case).
[FN67]. As to conflict of
human rights norms, see John Strawson, A Western Question to the Middle
East: "Is There a Human Rights Discourse in Islam?", 19 Arab Stud. Q.,
Winter 1997, at 31 ("Western discourses on human rights have become
increasingly bold during the last two decades in claiming an exclusive
Western heritage for human rights, which, it is argued, is located in
'Western civilization"'); Abdelwahab El-Affendi, Islam and Human
Rights: The Lessons from Sudan, 91 Muslim World 481 (2001) ("double
standards are being applied"); Ann Elizabeth Mayer, Universal Versus Islamic Human Rights: A Clash of Cultures or a Clash With a Construct?, 15 Mich. J. Int'l L. 307 (1993); Yash Ghai, Universalism and Relativism: Human Rights as a Framework for Negotiating
Interethnic Claims, 21 Cardozo L.R. 1095 (2000).
[FN68]. Sami Awad Aldeeb Abu-Sahlieh, Les mouvements islamistes et les droits de l'homme 7-8 (1998).
[FN69]. Viz. Ambiguity in
the use of the term "al Aqsa", Qur'an, 17:1 ("to the remote mosque of
which We have blessed the precincts"), the al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem
having been constructed in 715 A.D; see Martin Gilbert, Jerusalem: A
Tale of One City, The Competing Claims as Seen Through History, New
Republic, Nov. 14, 1994, at 17. See also "On the Beginning of the
Building of the Mosque al-Aqsa," The Book of Arousing Souls, Charles D.
Matthews, Palestine, Mohammedan Holy Land 2-4 (1949); and cf. Nüsse,
supra note 20 at 39 and n. 100, citing also Filastin al-Muslima, July
1990, at 31.
[FN70]. Qur'an, 5:120, 39:6
(inter alia); Bernard Lewis, The Political Language of Islam 30 (1988);
and see, e.g., Constitution of Iran of Oct. 24, 1979, art. 2. See, on
the adoption by Hamas of the non-Muslim concepts of watan and wataniyya
(nation and nationalism) Nüsse supra note 20 at 49, citing Hamas
Covenant, art. 12; Hillel Frisch, The Case of Religious Emulation: The
Nationalization of Universal Religious Doctrine in the Palestinian
Fundamentalist Movement, 12 Middle East Focus, Fall 1990, at 18-25.
[FN71]. Qur'an, 49:10;
Farooq Hassan, The Concept of State and Law in Islam 40 (1981); Hassan
Afchar. "The Muslim Conception of Law", The Different Conceptions of
the Law, 2 International Encyclopedia of Comparative Law, The Legal
Systems of the World: Their Comparison and Unification 84, 98-99 (1974).
[FN72]. Abdelouahed Belkeziz, La nationalité dans les Etats arabes 3-4 (1963).
[FN73]. Jean S. Saba, L'Islam et la nationalité 45 (1931).
[FN74]. Farooq Hassan, The Concept of State and Law in Islam, 36 (1981).
[FN75]. Jean S. Saba, L'Islam et la nationalité 65-80 (1931).
[FN76]. Hatti Cherif of Gul
Hanné, Nov. 3, 1839, & Hatti Humayun of Feb. 18, 1856, reprinted in
George Young, Corps de droit ottoman vol. 1 at 29 & vol. 2 at 3
(1905).
[FN77]. Text reprinted at 1907 Rev. du dr. internat. 27.
[FN78]. Pierre Arminjon, De la nationalité dans l'empire ottoman et spécialement en Egypte 14-67 (1903).
[FN79]. Law No. 1312,
Resmi-Gazeta No. 904, June 4, 1928, M.E. Salem, La loi nouvelle sur la
nationalité turque, 1929 Rev. du dr. internat. 25.
[FN80]. Louis Milliot, La conception de l'Etat et l'ordre légal dans l'Islam, 75 Rec. des cours 591 (1949 II).
[FN81]. Law of Sept. 24, 1926 in the Hejaz, now Western Saudi Arabia.
[FN82]. Paul Ghali, Les Nationalités detachées de l'Empire Ottoman à la suite de la Guerre 192 (1934) (informal translation).
[FN83]. Constitution of Saudi Arabia, Mar. 1992, art. 1.
[FN84]. Id., art. 6.
[FN85]. Abdelouahed
Belkeziz, La Nationalité dans les États arabes (1963); Nawaf A. Salam,
The Emergence of Citizenship in Islamdom, 12 Arab L.Q. 125 (1997).
[FN86]. M.A. Muqtedar Kahn,
American Muslims and the Moral Dilemmas of Citizenship, Wash. Rep.
Middle E. Affairs, May 2000 at 61; Gilles Kepel, Jihad: The Trail of
Political Islam 185-204 (2002); Abou el Fadl, supra note 1 at 52 .
[FN87]. See e.g., Abu-Hasan
al-Mawardi, al-Ahkam as-Sultaniyyah [The Laws of Islamic Governance],
(Asadullah Yate trans., 1996); Earl I.J. Rosenthal, Political Thought
in Medieval Islam: an Introductory Outline (1962); A.K.S. Lambton,
Islamic Political Thought, in Legacy of Islam 404 (Joseph Schact ed.,
2d ed. 1974). On the Islamist vision of democracy, see Nüsse, supra
note 20, 75-78.
[FN88]. Kawakita v. United States, 343 U.S. 717 (1952)
(Japanese-American POW guard convicted of capital treason); Joyce v.
Director of Public Prosecutions, [1946] A.C. 347 (Eng.) (conviction
under the Treason Act, 1351 for participation in Nazi propaganda
activities); In re Mittermaier, Cass. ital., 2 May 1946, 13 Ann. Dig.
60, 69-I Foro italiano 137 (1944) (conviction for treason; option for
German nationality under the Treaty of St-Germain did not divest the
accused of his obligation to Italy).
[FN89]. Blackmer v. United States, 284 U.S. 421, 437 (1932) (Writ of
certiorari; fines imposed on a U.S. citizen
resident in France for disobeying a subpoena to testify in a criminal
case); Albert Gouffre de Lapradelle, Affaire Henry M. Blackmer
extradition (1929); United States v. Lansky, 496 F.2d 1063 (5th Cir. 1974).
[FN90]. R. v. Aeneas MacDonald, (1747) 18 St. Tr. 858.
[FN91]. Ottoman nationality code of Jan. 19, 1869, reprinted at 2 George Young, Corps de droit ottoman 223 (1905).
[FN92]. F.A. Mann, The
Present Validity of Nazi Nationality Laws, 89 L.Q. Rev. 89, 194 (1973);
Oppenheim v. Cattermole, [1976] A.C. 249 (H.L.); Allied Control Council
(Kommandatura), Law No. 1 of Sept. 20, 1945 Official Gazette of the
Control Council for Germany, 1945, No. 1, at 3; also Law No. 12 of Nov.
17, 1949, Official Gazette, No. 4, at 36 on the nullity of certain
provisions of National-Socialist legislation relative to natives of
France and Luxembourg.
[FN93]. Afroyim v. Rusk, 387 U.S. 253, 268 (1967).
[FN94]. Inter-American Court of Human Rights, Jan. 19, 1984, No. OC-4/84,
Amendments to the naturalization provisions of the
Constitution of Costa Rica Advisory Opinion, 5 Human Rights L.J. 161
(1984); Written question No. 788/90, O.J.E.C., Dec. 24, 1990, C 325, at
42. The Council again emphasized its incompetence in matters of the
grant and withdrawal of nationality, even in the face of Community
provisions on the free movement of citizens, in response to question
No. 628/92, Jul. 3, 1992, O.J.E.C., Aug. 10, 1992, C-202/58.
[FN95]. Levita-Mühlstein v.
Dépt. féd. de justice et police, Trib. féd., June 14, 1946, 72-I A.T.F.
407 (1946) and Rosenthal v. Eidg. Justiz- und Polizeidepartment, Trib.
féd., Oct. 8, 1948, 74-I A.T.F. 346 (1948); and compare, on the
revocation of Soviet nationality, Tcherniak v. Tcherniak, Trib. Féd.
(2d Civ. Sect.), June 15, 1928, 54-II A.T.F. 225 (1928), 4 Ann. Dig.
62, 56 Clunet 208 (1929), note Noël-Henry, reasoning rejected in
Lempert v. Bonfol, 60 Déc. de la Cour féd. suisse 67 (1934), 7 Ann.
Dig. 290.
[FN96]. Vatican: Legge sulla
cittadinanza ed il soggiorno, June 7, 1929, 21 Acta Apostolicae Sedis
Supplemento 14 (1929), France: Ordonnance No. 62-825 of July 21, 1962
as modified, Journal Officiel, July 22, 1962 & July 11, 1965
(status of Français Musulmans).
[FN97]. E.g., Syria (Human Rights Watch, Memorandum to the UN Human Rights
Committee, 57th Sess., Apr. 2001) and see UN
Sub-Commission: The right of everyone to leave any country, including
his own, and to return to his own country-final report prepared by
C.L.C. Mubanga-Chipoya UN Doc. E/CN.4/Sub.2/1988/35 (June 20, 1988);
Cf. Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Dec. 10, 1948, art. 15(2):
"No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality"; UN
Commission on Human Rights res. 1998/48, Apr. 17, 1998, and 1999/28,
Apr. 26, 1999, on arbitrary deprivation of nationality. Zadvydas v. Davis, 533 U.S. 678 (2001)
concerned specimen cases where alien convicts susceptible to
deportation were refused recognition as nationals of the countries from
which they had departed.
[FN98]. R. v. Secretary of State for the F.C.O., ex p. Bancoult, [2001] Q.B. 1067 (D.C.).
[FN99]. Thomas D. Grant, The Recognition of States: Law and Practice in Debate and Evolution (1999).
[FN100]. § 7. Eugene
Cotran, Some Legal Aspects of the Formation of the United Arab Republic
and the United Arab States, 8 Int'l & Comp. L.Q., 346, 382 (1959).
[FN101].
Jacqueline Bendeddouche, Notion de nationalité et nationalité
algérienne 126 (thesis, Algiers, 1971, pub. 1982) (informal
translation); see Louis Gardet, La cité musulmane: Vie sociale et
politique (4th ed. 1976) for the definition of umma as framework for
the community in spiritual and social terms.
[FN102]. Jordanian Law No. 7 of 1963, amending the Jordanian Nationality Law, No. 6 of 1954.
[FN103]. Abd-el-Hakim, 12
Rev. internat. dr. internat. publique 550 (1905), 32 Clunet 1035
(1905), 1908-II Sirey 121, note de Boek; comment, Jean S. Saba, L'Islam
et la nationalité 81-82 (1931) (informal translation).
[FN104]. Saba, Supra note 103 at 562.
[FN105]. A. Kessmat Elgeddawy, Relations entre systèmes confessionnel et laïque en droit international privé 46 (1971).
[FN106]. Nawaf A. Salam, The Emergence of Citizenship in Islamdom, 12 Arab L.Q. 125, 134 (1997).
[FN107]. Abou el Fadl, supra note 1, at 150-51.
[FN108]. Louisiana
Purchase Treaty, Apr. 30, 1803, U.S.-Fr., 8 Stat. 200, T.S. 86; Alaska
Cession Treaty, Mar. 30, 1867, U.S.-Russ. 15 Stat. 539, T.S. 301.
[FN109]. Treaty to Resolve
Pending Boundary Differences and Maintain the Rio Grande and Colorado
River as the International Boundary, Nov. 23, 1970, U.S.-Mex. T.I.A.S.
7313, 23 U.S.T. 371.
[FN110]. Andrew Grossman, Nationality and the Unrecognised State, 50 Int'l & Comp. L.Q. 849 (2001).
[FN111]. 103 P.L.150, 107 Stat. 1510 (1993).
[FN112]. Rosebud Sioux Tribe v. Kneip, 430 U.S. 584 (1977) (treaty obligations); Tee-Hit-Ton Indians v. United States, 348 U.S. 272 (1955) (rights in land).
[FN113]. Bibliography at <http://www.bgu.ac.il/NCRD/bib1/val/Land-acquisition.htm>.
[FN114]. Joel Greenberg, A Group Uproots Arabs to Plant Jews, N.Y. Times, Aug. 2, 1998, sect. 1, at 18.
[FN115]. Notably the
Jerusalem Reclamation Project and Aterim Cohanim settler association.
See Elli Wohlgelernter, Moskowitz plans donors' visit to boost the
Right, Jerusalem Post, Jan. 1, 1999, at 1.
[FN116]. Alexandre Kedar,
The Legal Transformation of Ethnic Geography: Israeli Law and the
Palestinian Landholder 1948-1967, 33 N.Y.U. J. Int'l L. & Pol. 924
(2001); but see H.C. 6698/95, Qaadan v. Israel Lands Authority, 54(1)
P.D. 258 (2000) and Alexandre Kedar, "A First Step in a Difficult and
Sensitive Road": Preliminary Observations on Qaadan v. Katzir, 16 Bull.
Isr. Stud. 1 (2000), available at
<http://lawatch.haifa.ac.il/eng/select/march_ 00.html>; but see,
Terry Rempel, The Significance of Israel's Partial Annexation of East
Jerusalem, 51 Middle E.J. 520 (1997) (regarding the legal structure of
annexed East Jerusalem).
[FN117]. Stelio Séferiadès, L'échange des populations, 24 Rec. des cours 308 (1928 IV).
[FN118].
Justus R. Weiner, The Palestinian Refugees' 'Right to Return' and the
Peace Process, 20 B.C.L. Rev. 1 (1997); K.R. Radley, The Palestinian
Refugees: The Right to Return in International Law, 72 Am. J. Int'l L.
586 (1978); Guy S. Goodwin-Gill, The Refugee in International Law 91-93
(2d ed. 1996).
[FN119]. Tunis and Morocco
Nationality Decrees, 1423 P.C.I.J., Ser. B, No. 4; Convention on
Certain Questions Relating to the Conflict of Nationality Laws, Apr.
12, 1930, L.N. Doc. C. 24 m. 13, 1931, 179 L.N.T.S. 89, No. 4137 (1937).
[FN120]. Liechtenstein v. Guatemala (Nottebohm case) (2d phase), ICJ, at 4. (1955),
[FN121]. Decree-law No.
3370 of Sept. 20/23 1955, modified by laws No. 4532 of Aug. 17, 1966,
No. 481 of July 23/24, 1968, No. 610 of Aug. 17/21, 1970, No. 1250 of
Apr. 5, 1982, No. 1438 of Mar. 5/6, 1984. art. 9(14), Law No. 2623 of
June 24, 1998 abrogated art. 19 of the Nationality Code which permitted
such administrative annulment of nationality of persons who not of
"Greek ethnicity" . Cf.case of Moustafa Tsolak, Greek national resident
in Germany for more than ten years when he was deprived in 1981 of his
nationality for "refusal of military inscription", a case
over which the European Council declined competence. Written question
No. 1788/90, O.J.E.C., Dec. 24, 1990, C-325/42. The Council emphasized
its incompetence in matters of the grant and withdrawal of nationality,
even in the face of Community provisions on the free movement of
citizens, in response to question No. 628/92, July 3, 1992, O.J.E.C.,
Aug. 10, 1992, C-202/58; and that of Hussein Ramadanoglou, divested of
his Greek nationality in 1992 on the basis of departure from the
country without the intent to return, under circumstances where he had
taken advantage of his Community right of establishment in Germany,
Press release of June 12, 1996 of Greek Helsinki Monitor & Minority
Rights Group.
[FN122]. R. v. Secretary of State for the F.C.O., ex p. Bancoult, [2001] Q.B. 1067 (D.C.).
[FN123]. Michael Curtis, International Law and the Territories, 32 Harv. Int'l L.J. 457 (1991),
in which the author attacks for "selective and intemperate language"
and "animus that exceeds the usual boundaries of scholarly discourse"
the article by Richard A. Falk & Burns H. Weston, The Relevance
of International Law to Palestinian Rights in the West Bank and Gaza:
In Legal Defense of the Intifada, 32 Harv. Int'l L.J. 129 (1991).
[FN124].
Lex Takkenberg, The Status of Palestinian Refugees in International Law
12-18 (1998) (overview); Yoav Gelber, Palestine 1948: War, Escape and
the Emergence of the Palestinian Refugee Problem 7-9, 74-83, 138-54,
162-63 (2001) (new appraisal from Western and Israeli archives); Elias
Sanbar, Palestine 1948: l'expulsion 147-91 (1984) (Palestinian
argument); Efraim Karsh, Were the Palestinians Expelled?, 110
Commentary, Jul.-Aug. 2000, at 29.
[FN125]. Gelber, Palestine 1948 298-302 (2001).
[FN126]. Joseph H.H.
Weiler, Israel, the Territories and International Law: When Doves are
Hawks, in Israel Among the Nations: International and Comparative Law
Perspectives on Israel's 50th Anniversary 381 (Alred E. Kellerman et
al. eds., 1998).
[FN127]. This issue was
debated in relation to concessions granted to George Speight following
his overthrow of the Fiji government in 2000.
[FN128]. See The Arab-Israeli Conflict (John Norton Moore ed., 1974), published by Princeton U. Press.
[FN129]. Julius Stone, Israel and Palestine: Assault on the Law of Nations
(1981); cf. Chairman's statement, U.N. Committee
on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People,
220th Meeting, U.N. Doc. A/AC.183/SR.220 (1996) ("Contrary to the views
of certain delegations, the Committee had never shown any bias in its
evaluation of the Palestinian problem.")
[FN130]. Muhammad Y.
Muslih, in The Origins of Palestinian Nationalism (1988) argues that
"the fragmentation of the Arab nationalist groups in Faysal's Arab
government in Damascus between 1918 and 1920 was a major factor which
significantly contributed to the split of the Arab nationalist movement
along provincial lines in 1920." He maintains that it was land
ownership and government service that had distinguished the great
notable families of Palestine. These are attributes that were largely
lost with the creation of the State of Israel. Until Oslo II no
Palestinian entity possessed the educational and propaganda facilities
used by other former Ottoman territories to inculcate national identity.
[FN131]. Number provided
in a communication from the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs (1999).
The Israeli Statistical Yearbook of Jerusalem for 2000 reports the Arab
population of East Jerusalem as 208,700. On the status of East
Jerusalem and its inhabitants, see Esther Rosalind Cohen, Human Rights
in the Israeli-occupied Territories, 1967-1982 38-42 (1985).
[FN132]. Thus: Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978, Pub. L. 95-608, title I, Sec. 101, Nov. 8, 1978, 92 Stat. 3071, 25 U.S.C. § 1911 (2000); Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians v. Holyfield, 490 U.S. 30 (1989); In the Matter of the Guardianship of Q.G.M., a minor, 808 P.2d 684 (Okl. 1991).
[FN133]. Robert Fisk, Exodus: Christians of the Arab world flee their Biblical homeland, Independent (London), Sept. 24, 1997, at 11.
[FN134]. Education
provisions: Commission Regulation 1612/68, 1968, OJ, English Special
Edition 1968 (II), at 475), Casagrande v. Landeshauptstadt München,
1974 E.C.R. 773, Gravier v. City of Liège, 1985 E.C.R. 593; Forcheri v.
Belgian State, [1983] E.C.R. 2323; Blaizot v. Université de Liège, 1988
E.C.R. 379; Echternach & Moritz, 1989 E.C.R. 723; Commission v.
Belgium, 1996 E.C.R. I-4307; Landesamt für Ausbildungsförderung
Nordrhein-Westfalen v. Gaal, 1995 E.C.R. I-1031; Di Leo v. Land Berlin,
1990 E.C.R. I-4185; Brown v. Secretary of State for Scotland, 1988
E.C.R. 3205.
[FN135]. Refugee
Convention, Geneva, July 28, 1951, 189 U.N.T.S. 137, No. 2545 (1954),
art. 12-24; James C. Hathaway & Anne K. Cusick, Refugee Rights
are not Negotiable, 14 Geo. Immigr. L.J. 481, 485 (2000) (socio-economic rights).
[FN136]. Jacob Robinson, Were the Minority Treaties a Failure? (1943).
[FN137]. Native Hawaiian language promotion under Pub. L. 89-10, 79 Stat. 27, amended by Pub. L. 103-382, 108 Stat. 3800, 20 U.S.C. § 7905 (2000); Native American language policy, Pub.L. 101-477, 104 Stat. 1155, 25 U.S.C. § 2903 (2000).
[FN138]. Compare the mass
emigration to the United States of Hmong tribe members from Laos,
supporters of the U.S. during the Vietnam War. On their difficulty
assimilating in U.S. society, see Tim Weiner, Many Laotians in U.S.
Find Their Hopes Betrayed, N.Y. Times, Dec. 27, 1997, at A1.
[FN139]. Aponno v.
Netherlands (Amboinese Soldiers' case), H.R., 22 Jan. 1951, N.J. 217,
17 I.L.R. 199 (Neth.); cf. In re Hehanussa, Ct. App. The Hague, Nov. 6,
1952, 19 I.L.R. 337 (Amboinese resident in Netherlands and renouncing
Indonesian nationality held not entitled to Dutch nationality under
terms of independence agreement).
[FN140]. The U.S. accepted no continuing obligation to accept Hmong asylum seekers: Yang v. INS, 79 F.3d 932 (9th Cir. 1996) (denying asylum because of prior firm resettlement in France).
[FN141]. Compare "temporary allegiance": The Pizarro, 15 U.S. (2 Wheat.) 227, 246 (1817).
[FN142]. R.F.A. van den Bedem, Motives for Naturalization (1993).
[FN143]. Exceptions
include two cases of indigenous groups converted to Catholicism, the
first those recruited by Cardinal Lavigerie at Sainte-Monique and at
Saint-Cyprien-des-Attafs during the famine of 1865-1868, the second the
Kabyles of Beni Ouadias (Djurdjura) converted by the White Fathers. 1
Charles-André Julien, Histoire de l'Algérie contemporaine 440-42 (1964).
[FN144]. "Whoever changes
his Islamic religion, kill him." Sahih Al-Bukhari, 9:57. For exegesis
of this hadith in relation to Qur'an 2:256 ("no compulsion in Islam")
see S. A. Rahman, Punishment of Apostasy in Islam 16-25 (1972); Mohamed
S.El-Awa, Punishment in Islamic Law: A Comparative Study (1982); Sami
A. Aldeeb Abu-Sahlieh, Salman Rushdie et l'iceberg: consequences
pénales et politiques de l'apostasie en droit musulman et arabe, in
Festschrift für Jan Stepan 255 (Jarmila Bednarikova & Frank C. Chapman eds., 1994).
[FN145]. 2 George Young, Corps de droit ottoman 11-12 (1905).
[FN146]. Constitution of
India, Nov. 26, 1949, art. 25-28; 1 H.N. Seervai, Constitutional Law of
India: A Critical Commentary, 1259-1308 (4th ed. 1999); Tahir Mahmood,
Islamic Law and State Legislation on Religious Conversion in India, in
Islam and Public Law 159 (Chibli Maslatt ed. 1993).
[FN147]. Tewfik v. Elias,
Trib. mixte d'Egypte, C.A. (3d Ch.) Dec. 18, 1923, Gaz. trib. mixtes,
XIV, at 171 (informal translation) (Succession of a Coptic Christian
converted to Islam in order to marry a second wife; after having
repudiated her he reconverted to Christianity).
[FN148]. Rudolph Peters
& Gert J.J. de Vries, Apostasy in Islam, 17 Die Welt des Islams 1
(1968); Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im, The Islamic Law of Apostasy and its
Modern Applicability, 16 Religion 197 (1986) (conviction and execution
in the Sudan of Mahmoud Muhammad Taha); David F. Forte, Apostasy and Blasphemy in Pakistan, 10 Conn. J. Int'l. L. 27 (1994); Donna E. Arzt, Religious Human Rights in Muslim States of the Middle East and North Africa, 10 Emory Int'l L. Rev. 139 (1996); but compare Minister for Home Affairs v. Jamaluddin bin
Othman, [1990] L.R.C. (Const.) 380 (professing Christianity in Malaysia held not a violation of Internal Security Act, 1960).
[FN149]. Recalling that
adoption does not exist in Islam and has been recognized under the laws
of only one Muslim jurisdiction, Tunisia, Law No. 58- 27 of Mar. 4,
1958.
[FN150]. Thus rendering
all the more shocking and threatening to the religious establishment
recent discoveries of early Qur'anic fragments, which could, by
revising history and destabilizing the principle of ijtihad, weaken the
foundations of the doctrine of immutability. Christoph Luxenberg, Die
syro-aramäische Lesart des Koran: ein Beitrag zur Entschlüsselung der
Koransprache (2000); The Origins of the Koran (Ibn Warraq ed., 1998);
Alexander Stille, Scholars Are Quietly Offering New Theories of the
Koran, N.Y. Times, Mar. 2, 2002, at A1; Toby Lester, What Is the Koran,
Atlantic Monthly, Jan. 1999, at 43.
[FN151]. Bastanipour v. Immigration and Naturalization Service, 980 F.2d 1129 (7th Cir. 1992)
(granting petition of Iranian convert); cf. R. v. Home Secretary ex p.
Kazmi, [1994] Imm. A.R. 94 (denying petition of Pakistani convert to
Christianity based on Home Office finding that instances of Pakistani discrimination were "not commonplace").
[FN152]. Sami Awad Aldeeb
Abu-Sahlieh, L'impact de la relgion sur l'ordre juridique, cas de
l'Egypte, non-musulmans en pays d'Islam 256 (1979) (informal
translation); similarly, Joseph Schacht, An Introduction to Islamic Law
131-32 (1964).
[FN153]. In re Marriage of Red Fox, 23 Or. App. 393, 542 P.2d 918 (1975)
(Native American); Dame N'Guyen Thi An v. N'Guyen Can, Seine, (1st
Ch.), Oct. 26, 1967, 96 Clunet 406 (1969), note Ph. K.; District
Stanleyville, Sept. 21, 1953, J.T.O., 1954, at 136, note G.M.; Johan M.
Pauwels, Répertoire de droit coutumier congolais 70 (1970); but see
Aning v. Kingful, [1980] G.L.R. 404 (Ghana, distinguishing between
customary and civil marriage); In re Bethell, (1887) 38 Ch.D. 220, 234
(Chancery 1887) (Eng.) (Bechuanaland, mixed marriage; rejected); Cousin
de Lavallière v. de la Bernardie, Req., Mar. 14, 1933, 1934-I Sirey
161, report Pilon, note Solus (Guinea, mixed plural marriage; rejected).
[FN154]. Christian Bruschi, La nationalité dans le droit colonial, 18 Procès, Cahiers d'analyse pol. et jur. 29 (1988).
[FN155].
E.g., Decree of July 29, 1887, J.O.R.F., Aug. 25, 1887; decree of Oct.
3, 1910, J.O.R.F., Oct. 8, 1910 (Tunisia); decree of Apr. 29, 1920,
J.O.R.F., May 2,1920 (Morocco). Natives of a protectorate could be
considered nationals of the protecting state for some purposes,
National Bank of Egypt v. Austro-Hungarian Bank, Anglo-Austrian Mixed
Trib., July 13, 1923, III Rec. (1924), at 236, 2 Ann. Dig. 23.
[FN156]. Shaíban v.
Commissioner for Migration and Statistics, Palestine Sup. Ct. sitting
as H.C.J., [1945] 12 P.L.R. 551, 12 Ann. Dig. 15.
[FN157]. Decree of Nov. 7, 1930, J.O.R.F., 13 Nov. 1930 (Togo and Cameroon).
[FN158]. The question of
conversion under Jewish law, where only halachic conversion according
to strict Orthodox tradition will be universally recognized, arose in
Miller v. Ministry of the Interior, H.C. 230/86, P.D. 40(4) 436, 9
Jewish L. Ann. 265 (1991) (conversion by Reform rabbi; the court
rejected the proposition from the Ministry to include the notation
"convert" in the margin of the identity certificate); also Naamat v.
Ministry of Interior, Bagatz 5070/95, Bagatz 2901/97, A.C. 392/99 (S.
Ct., Feb. 20, 2002).
[FN159]. Damanhour, Egypt, Oct. 21, 1956, S. Hanafi, Recueil de
jurisprudence de statut personnel, Moassassit
al-Matbouat al-Haditha, Alexandria, undated (in Arabic), vol. 2, at 88,
discussed in Sami Awad Aldeeb Abu-Sahlieh, L'impact de la relgion sur
l'ordre juridique, cas de l'Egypte, non-musulmans en pays d'Islam
256-57, n. 29 (1979). Similarly, Farida Fouad Nakhla v. Sameer Ameer,
[1957] S.L.J.R. 21 (C.A. Khartoum).
[FN160]. See also Ahmed
Seif al-Islam Hamad, Legal Plurality and Legitimation of Human Rights
Abuses, A Case Study of State Council Rulings Concerning the Rights of
Apostates, in Legal Pluralism in the Arab World 220 (Baudouin Dupret et
al. eds., 1999).
[FN161]. 1983 Code C. 1364.
[FN162]. E.g., art. 6 of
the Algerian Nationality Code: "The following possess Algerian
nationality by descent: (1) the child born of an Algerian father; (2)
the child born of an Algerian mother and an unkown father; (3) the
child born of an Algerian mother and a stateless father." (informal
translation)
[FN163]. See Circular of 5
Nov. 1973 of Tunisian Ministry of Justice prohibiting solemnization of
marriages between female Tunisian Muslims and non-
Muslims, Université catholique de Louvain,
Documentation sur le statut juridique des Musulmans en Belgique 311
(1990); Qur'an 2:21 ("And do not marry the idolatresses until they
believe"); Taushihul Masa'el, § 2406 (Shia compilation; "A Muslim woman
cannot marry a non-Muslim, and a male Muslim cannot marry a non-Muslim
woman who is not Ahlul Kitab [ahl al-kitab, person of scripture]").
[FN164]. Unpublished
Egyptian case, 27 Feb. 1934, cited in A. Kessmat Elgeddawy, Relations
entre systèmes confessionnel et laïque en droit international privé 165
(1971); cf. Barak v. Muslim Religious Court, (1987) 41(ii) P.D. 745, 23
Isr. L. Rev. 525 (1989), at 525; Philippine Civil Code, Art, 93 (public
officials may not inquire into the bona fides of religious profession
of applicants for marriage solemnization). Reconversion from Islam is
not, however, cognizable by the Egyptian civil courts, which will
enforce the shari'a prohibition, State Council case 20/29, Apr. 8,
1980, discussed in Ahmed Serf Al-Islam Hamad, Legal Plurality and
Legitimation of Human Rights Abuses: A Case Study of State Council
Rulings Concerning the Rights of Apostates, in Baudouin Dupret et al.,
Legal Pluralism in the Arab World. 219, 222 (1999).
[FN165]. Provisional Constitution of Mar. 5, 1958 of the United Arab
Republic, art. 7, Cotran, Eugene, Some Legal
Aspects of the Formation of the United Arab Repuglic and the United
Arab States The International and Comparative Law Quarterly 382 (1959);
Universal Islamic Declaration of Human Rights, Islamic Council, Paris,
Sept. 19, 1981, art. XXIII(a): "In view of the fact that the World of
Islam is veritably Ummah Islamia [world Muslim community], every Muslim
shall have the right to freely move in and out of any Muslim country."
[FN166]. Abd-el-Hakim v.
Ministere des Aaffaires Estrangeres, 12 Rev. Internat. dr. Internat.
Publique 550 (1905), 32 Clunet 1035 (1905), 1908-II Sirey 121.
[FN167]. Bruce Maddy-Weitzman, The Crystallization of the Arab State System, 1945-1954, (1993).
[FN168]. Werner Menski,
Nationalité, citoyenneté et Musulmans en Grande-Bretagne, in Islams
d'Europe intégration ou insertion communautaire? 133-40 (Robert
Bistolfi & François Zabbal eds., 1995).
[FN169]. Epoux Djebbar,
Cons. d'Etat, Jul. 25, 1986, 1986 Rec. Lebon 214 (Algerian dual
nationality rule; plea of mistake); Jacqueline Costa-Lascoux, L'immigration algérienne en France et la nationalité des enfants d'algériens, 1981 Ann. de l'Afrique du Nord 298.
[FN170]. EUROSTAT,
"Acquisition of Citizenship by Naturalization in the European
Union--1993", Statistics in Focus Population and Social Conditions,
1995/11, Cat. No. CA-NK-95-011-EN-C, which suggests that failure to
naturalize may be due to the lateness of the relevant migration.
Germany and Turkey only recently altered their nationality laws to
facilitate naturalization, attribution of nationality at birth and dual
nationality of Turks resident in Germany.
[FN171]. The BCCI
litigation and Parliamentary and Congressional testimony provided such
insight into transnational ethnic solidarity with economic and
political significance: Report of Lord Justice Bingham, Inquiry Into
the Supervision of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, Oct.
22, 1992; 102th Cong., 2d Sess., U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign
Relations, The BCCI Affair, Sept. 30 1992.
[FN172]. Brad R. Roth, Governmental Illegitimacy in International Law (1999).
[FN173].
Cf. tolerance by and towards Islamized and Muslim customary law
regimes: Brigitte Djuidje, Pluralisme législatif camerounais et droit
international privé 30-58 (1999).
[FN174]. "We ought not to
be deceived or embarrassed by the attacks of the Orientalists on the
origin of jihad ...", Qutb, supra note 9 at 59.
[FN175]. League of Arab States, draft Arab Convention for the Suppression of Terrorism, Cairo, April 1998.
[FN176]. Qutb, supra note 9 at 95
[FN177]. Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, Geneva, July 28, 1951, art. 1(F)189 U.N.T.S. 137, No. 2545 (1954).
[FN178]. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (1994).
[FN179]. Nations and Nationalism (1983). Similarly, Kai Freese, Hijacking India's History, N.Y. Times, Dec. 30, 2002.
[FN180]. Thomas L. Friedman, The Core of Muslim Rage, N.Y. Times, Mar. 6,
2002, at A21.
END OF DOCUMENT
(C) 2005 Thomson/West. No Claim to Orig. U.S. Govt. Works.