Shalakany Selected as Carnegie Scholar
 Amr Shalakany, assistant professor of law and director of the LLM program, has been selected as a Carnegie Scholar by the prestigious Carnegie Corporation of New York for his commitment to investigating new lines of research in modern Egyptian legal history.
Through his research titled, “The Redefinition of Sharia in Modern Egyptian Legal Thought: 1798 - Present,” Shalakany traces the changing definition of sharia (Islamic law) over the past two centuries of Egyptian jurisprudence. He challenges the commonly accepted idea that there was a transition from Islamic to secular law in 1883, arguing that legal secularism existed in Egypt even prior to that year.
“A foundational premise has long ruled among historians of modern Egyptian law, namely that Egypt had an ‘Islamic’ legal system before 1883, which modernized into a ‘secular’ normative order from that year onward,” Shalakany said. “This premise is shared by Western and Egyptian mainstream historians alike, both of whom generally describe the post-1883 development of Egyptian legal thought as riddled by anxieties over reconciling traditional sharia principles and modern needs for legal reform. The same premise also underpins ideological demands for the return of the sharia by Islamist political actors today, most prominently in the Muslim Brotherhood platform during the 2007 elections, calling for a full-scale review of Egypt’s legal system to assess its conformity with sharia norms.” |
