Modern applications of Islamic law make it appear that Islamic law is oppressive and opposed to modern values. But in fact, this book argues, Islamic law is dynamic and creative, and it can respond to the needs of many different times and places. Islamic law has always undergone reform to help Muslims adapt to contemporary values while demonstrating their love for God. In the modern age, however, reform has been difficult and slow-going. That is not because Islamic law cannot reform, but because the language and logic of reform has been lost. This book introduces readers to the vibrant history of Islamic law and provides a step-by-step analysis of how Islamic law has reformed in the past and can continue to reform in the present and future. Through a series of concrete case studies - examining laws that command that adulterers be stoned, that women receive unequal inheritance shares, and that those who convert to other religions or forswear Islam should be punished - this book introduces readers to the language of Islamic legal reform, allows readers to listen in on internal religious conversations, and invites them to participate in the expansive possibilities that Islamic law and legal reform offer Muslims and non-Muslims in the modern world. Rumee Ahmed is Associate Professor of Islamic Law at the University of British Columbia.

He is the author of Narratives of Islamic Legal Theory (Oxford UP, 2012). Among his achievements: in 2006, while still finishing his doctoral degree, Professor Ahmed was appointed as Brown University's first Muslim chaplain after a nationwide search. He remained at Brown in that capacity for two and a half years. A former fellow at the Stanford Humanities Center, where he finished this book, Ahmed recently accepted a four-year appointment at UBC as Associate Dean of Communications and Innovation in the Faculty of Arts.