Private International Law (Conflicts of Law)

in academia, which has taken a revolutionary step towards deconstructing the Eurocentric narratives in the discipline, this book, written by Hassan S. Khalilieh, is a promising work that unfolds Islamic thought on the law of the sea. Given the vast complexity of Islamic jurisprudence, the task undertaken by Khalilieh is absolutely praiseworthy. The cardinal argument that stems from his work is based on comparing and contrasting the Islamic legal principles on the law of the sea with Western concepts. In performing this task, the author has aptly used Qur’anic references to the sea and water that later provided the ground rules for Islamic legal principles of the law of the sea: “A Qur’anic verse (:) states: ‘We have made from water every living thing’” (p. ). In addition to illustrating references from the Qur’an as the prime source, Khalilieh traces the historical development of the Islamic jurisprudential approach to the freedom of navigation during the time of Prophet Muhammad. In fact, the author provides a comprehensive account of the development of the Islamic jurisprudential approach to the law of the sea from the time of Prophet Muhammad to the post-prophetic era, when Muslim jurists created different narratives based on geopolitical divisions. The historical analysis presented by Khalilieh shows the extent to which Islamic rulers developed their penchant for systematically organizing maritime affairs as a result of the expansion of Islamic empires. Another important aspect of the book is that it provides a fair answer to the common misconceptions prevailing in academia regarding some of the concepts of Islamic law and its practices. For instance, the author refutes some of the academic myths justifying the connection between piracy and the Islamic concept of Jihad (p. ). In the concluding chapter, Khalilieh claims that Grotius’s doctrine of freedom of the seas was rooted in a non-European setting, and he further elaborates on the manner Muslims adopted in preserving the universality of the sea as a divine gift to all humankind (p. ). The third chapter of the book mainly discusses the Islamic legal implications for piracy in the high seas. The issue of piracy appears to be one of the most crucially important issues that have been discussed in modern international law of the sea. However, the usage of Islamic theological references without providing a coherent elucidation has perhaps made Khalilieh’s work a slightly tiring task for a general reader of the international law of the sea. In our opinion, the book would have been much clearer if the author had reduced the number of Qur’anic references relating to Islamic jurisprudential practices—but we cannot reproach the author as his discipline lies in Islamic studies. All in all, the book provides a novel reading on the international law of the sea and right to innocent passages from an Islamic jurisprudential perspective and this contribution fills a vacuum in existing international law of the sea scholarship.