Jonathan Brown - The Logic of Islamic Law and Its Transformation in Modernity

About this lecture

In this wide-ranging lecture, Professor Jonathan Brown explores the internal logic of Islamic law — from the foundational distinction between the rights of God and the rights of human beings, to the structure of pre-modern Islamic courts, to the near-impossibility of applying the hudud punishments in classical jurisprudence. He then traces how the modernization of Muslim-majority states from the 19th century onward transformed this legal landscape, shifting authority from independent qadi courts to state-controlled siyasa institutions — and what this means for the relationship between Islamic law, justice, and legitimacy today.