Dynamic Legal Pluralism and the Reconstruction of Unofficial Muslim Laws in England, Turkey and Pakistan
Muslim Laws, Politics and Society in Modern Nation States: Dynamic Legal Pluralisms in England, Turkey and Pakistan IHSAN YILMAZ SOAS, University of London, UK ASHGATE Ihsan Yilmaz 2005 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. Published by Ashgate Publishing Limited Gower House Croft Road Aldershot Hants GU11 3HR England Ashgate Publishing Company 131 Main Street Burlington, VT 05401-5600 USA Ashgate website: http://www.ashgate.com Law, Politics and Society in the Post-Modern Condition 1 Chapter 1 Law, Politics and Society in the Post- Modern Condition One of the most crucial legal and sociological issues of the modern age is how far and with what consequences law could be used in the process of the deliberate forming of society. In this regard, the modern nation-state law has often been employed as a modernizing agent or as an instrument of modernization. The law is expected to act as an agent of change and development. Almost all modern nation- states have steadily tried to use law as a tool of social engineering and as a mode of organizing beliefs and values to shape and to uniformize their societies in the modern era. Post-modernity provides a philosophical frame or paradigm in which modernity is critically examined, using primarily the techniques of „deconstruction‟ developed by hermeneutics and social linguistics.1 Post-modernity can be seen as a multifocal symbol, which in its most generalized usage challenges the assumption of universality inherent in the legitimating discourses of modernity such as secularism, rationality, social stratification, urbanization and industrialization.
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