Author Description

Constitutionalism in Islamic Countries: Between Upheaval and Continuity examines the question of whether something similar to an "Islamic constitutionalism" has emerged out of the political and constitutional upheaval witnessed in many parts of North Africa, the Middle East, and Central and Southern Asia. In order to identify its defining features and to assess the challenges that Islamic constitutionalism poses to established concepts of constitutionalism, this book offers an integrated analysis of the complex frameworks in Islamic countries, drawing on the methods and insights of comparative constitutional law, Islamic law, international law and legal history. European and North American experiences are used as points of reference against which the peculiar challenges, and the specific answers given to those challenges in the countries surveyed, can be assessed. The book also examines ways in which the key concepts of constitutionalism, including fundamental rights, separation of powers, democracy and rule of law, may be adapted to an Islamic context, thus providing valuable new insights on the prospects for a genuine renaissance of constitutionalism in the Islamic world in the wake of the "Arab spring."