no misappropriation of booty or spoils of war) nor be guilty of cowardliness…You are likely to pass by people who have devoted their lives to monastic services leave them alone.'Īccording to Islamic tradition, Muslim rulers have the right and even obligation to suspend the law in the interest of justice. You must not mutilate dead bodies do not kill a woman, a child, or an aged man do not cut down fruitful trees do not destroy inhabited areas do not slaughter any of the enemies’ sheep, cow or camel except for food do not burn date palms, nor inundate them do not embezzle (e.g. Do not commit treachery or deviate from the right path. In a famous decree, Abu Bakr al-Siddiq, the first Caliph, told his military commander: “Stop, O people, that I may give you ten rules for guidance on the battlefield. The actions and statements of the Prophet Muhammad and of the early Caliphs of Islam point to strong humanitarian considerations. Even more, they were far from dogmatic or essentialist in nature.” “Muslim juristic discourses were neither purely functional nor moralistic. Much like in IHL, “Muslim jurists balanced practical interests against various imperatives,” writes Khaled Abou El Fadl, a professor of Islamic jurisprudence at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). “Fight in the way of Allah with those who fight with you, and do not exceed the limits,” says the Muslim holy book, the Koran, “surely Allah (God) does not love those who exceed the limits.” “While according sanction to fighting in self-defence… enjoins concurrently, humanitarian rules of warfare to mitigate the human suffering it inflicts,” writes former Pakistani Foreign Minister Agha Shahi in his book The Role of Islam in Contemporary International Relations. More than a millennium before the codification of the Geneva Conventions, most of the fundamental categories of protection which the Conventions offer could be found, in a basic form, in Islamic teachings.Islamic norms emphasize restraint and stress the importance of not doing more harm than is necessary to accomplish the goal at hand. This is the basis of the rules of war, which were first codified by Muslim jurist Mohammad Ibn al-Hassan al-Shaybani in the eight century AD.

Jurists developed the Islamic law of nations – known as the siyar – to regulate the conduct with non-Muslim states during the rise of Islam. Islamic law is also shaped by commentaries and rulings, known as fatwas, by Muslim scholars.

Scholars have translated these sources into a legal system through two recognized methods - Ijma Ulama, the unanimous consensus of scholars, and qiyas, analogical or deductive reasoning – which have themselves become sources of law. As such, “Islamic law is a jurist’s law,” says Andrew March, associate professor of Islamic law at Yale University. However, at times, these sources can be seen to contradict each other. The primary sources of Islamic law are the holy book, the Koran the teachings and practices of Prophet Muhammad, the Sunnah and the military conduct of the Caliphs and military commanders of the time.

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