Islamic Law on Trial

Prior to the East India Company’s arrival in India in 1661, Islamic law was widely applied in India by the Mughal Empire. As the Company’s power grew, it established a court system intended to limit Islamic law. Following the Great Rebellion of 1857, the project of jural colonization replaced the decentralized Islamic legal system with a new standardized system. Islamic Law on Trial interrogates the project of juridical colonization and demonstrates that alongside, and despite, the violent displacement of Muslim legal sovereignty, Muslims were able to engage with and even champion Islamic law from inside the colonial judiciary. The outcome of their work was a paradoxical legal terrain that appeared legitimate both to Muslim practitioners and English colonizers. Through this story of courtroom contestations, Sohaira Siddiqui challenges long-standing assumptions about Islamic law under British rule, the ways in which colonial power displaced pre-existing traditions, and how local elites navigated the new institutions imposed upon them.