Originally from Arbitration in the MENA

Preview Page

[1] INTRODUCTION

Who is afraid of sharia in MENA Arbitration? And why would this Islamic source of law be a threat to modern methods of dispute settlement? Is this fear well grounded? These are some of the questions that are at stake while studying the field of application of Islamic sharia in MENA arbitration today.

MENA countries are not a unipolar world even if they have Islam and the Arab culture in common. Palestine has been excluded from the scope of our study, due to the difficulty in gaining access to reliable information and major political challenges. The countries studied here are geographically spread over three large regions:  The start, more or less close to the European continent, the North African countries: Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt; countries of the Near East: Syria, Lebanon and Jordan; and the Gulf countries: Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, and Yemen.

The issues we are addressing in this contribution are mainly related to civil and commercial arbitration, whether domestic or international. The field of application of sharia to these issues has a proper interest due to the features of sharia as such in general and of arbitration in particular as known by the Islamic sources of law.

Islamic legal systems have their own source of law, the sharia.  The sharia is a body of commandments of Allah (God), revealed through his Prophet Mohammed, which determines the conduct and behaviour of the Muslim follower and more generally the socio-legal order of the Muslim community.  Fundamental differences separate sharia from the rule of positive law.