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.