Apostasy as objective and depersonalized fact: two recent Egyptian court judgments.(Part II: Islamic law: boundaries and rights) From: Social Research | Date: September 22, 2003| Author: Johansen, Baber | COPYRIGHT 2003 New School for Social Research. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan.  All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group.Copyright information

THE court judgments in the recent apostasy trials in the Arab world have brought about fundamental changes in the control of belief and religious affiliation that are directly related to the transformation Islamic law underwent when it became integrated into the legislative codes of the new nation-states.

From the eighth to the nineteenth century, the norms of Islamic law were the result of learned debates among independent jurists and their schools of law. Islamic law w...