Informing humanitarians worldwide 24/7 — a service provided by UN OCHA

World

Islamic Jurisprudence and the Regulation of Armed Conflict

Attachments

The increase in violent attacks against civilians and non-civilians and the claims made by
groups waging such attacks that their acts are legitimate under Islamic law generated wide
interest in Islamic 'laws of war'. This paper attempts to challenge the approach focused on
comparison between international humanitarian law (IHL) and Islamic law on the basis of the
rules adopted in each system and argues that both legal regimes are governed by certain
theoretical and ideological paradigms that are distinct from each other. In order to highlight
this difference, the paper examines the different juristic approaches to issues of concern to the
jurists and shows how these approaches reflected particular agenda and thus can not be
simply compared to rules of IHL, because these are equally governed by other agendas and
interests.