Shari'a, Inshallah: Finding God in Somali Legal Politics By Mark Fathi Massoud, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021, 368 pp., £84.99
| Published date | 01 December 2023 |
| Author | JOHN STRAWSON |
| Date | 01 December 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/jols.12457 |
DOI: 10.1111/j ols.12457
BOOK REVIEW
Shari’a, Inshallah: Finding God in Somali Legal
Politics
By Mark Fathi Massoud, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021,
368 pp., £84.99
JOHN STRAWSON
Department of Law,Policing and Justice, University of East London, University Square Stratford, 1 Salway Road,
London, E15 1NF, England
Email: J.Strawson@uel.ac.uk
Images of Iranian and Afghan women being attackedby security forces for demanding basic rights
are a stark illustration of how Islamic law is used by oppressive regimes. Mark Fathi Massoud’s
fascinating and provocative book sets out to etch a quite different account of the role of Islamic
law. This is Islamic lawas a means of liberation.
Shari’a, Inshallah: Finding God in Somali Legal Politics is a socio-legal study of Islamic law
in Somalia and Somaliland. It draws on 142 interviews with lawyers, scholars, aid workers, and
activists to narrate the emergence of the two countries from British and Italian colonialism and
the various attempts to construct a post-colonial state. The background, of course, is the collapse
of the unified independent Somali state in 1991 after the disastrous 21-year Siad Barre regime and
the civil wars and strife that followed.
While some commentators might argue that the entanglement of Somalis in the rise of Islamist
politics, including al-Qa’ida, underscores the dangers of Islam, Massoud invites us to consider an
alternative view. Islam both as a religion and as a legal system is seen as offering a way out of
the conflict, economic decline, and political instability. Massoud writes: ‘In adopting a socio-legal
approach to shari’a, this book does not appeal to a nostalgic return to Islam’sroots’ (p. 53). On the
contrary, its ‘approach to shari’a entails investigating the social disruptions, discontinuities, and
disobediences that emerge when people invoke shari’ato fight for freedom and limit the authority
of those holding power’ (p. 53).
These are ambitious claims. They do not sit well with the way in which existing Islamic legal
systems appear to operate. What Massoud is forcing the reader to do is to address whether such
systems in Iran, Afghanistan, or Saudi Arabia are in fact the necessary consequence of the Islamic
legal tradition. He argues that shari’a has a ‘plural nature’ in theory and that a socio-legal study
‘becomes a way to address this gap between shari’ain theory and the actual practices in Muslim-
majority societies’ (p. 51). As a result, instead of describing shari’a,Massoud attempts to grasp the
© 2023 The Author.Journal of Law and Society © 2023 Cardiff University Law School.
J. Law Soc. 2023;50:585–588. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/jols 585
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