Intent in Islamic Law

Motive and Meaning in Medieval Sunnī Fiqh

This is the first broad study of the treatment of intent in Islamic law, examining ritual, commercial, family, and penal law and providing new insights into Muslim understandings of law, religious ritual, action, agency, and language.

INTENT IN ISLAMIC PENAL LAW Introduction Questions of intent in cases of
harmful action have long exercised the minds of lawyers, law professors, moral
philosophers, and mystery novelists, generating perhaps as much imaginative
casuistry as any legal topic. As Mary Douglas once observed about law in
another context, “everything would be quite straightforward were it not that the
legal mind has seen fit to ruling on some borderline cases.”1 Beyond confessed,
cold-blooded ...