Sri Lankan Personal Laws Between Justice and Freedom
Sri Lankan Personal Laws Between Justice and Freedom
the linkages between those Islamic legal values, and how those
values are shared within other customs and constitutional and
universal settings, including laws and jurisprudence, diverse legal
systems of various contexts in the human history in general and
the prevailing Sri Lankan context-related laws and jurisprudence
in particular. Third, they have to devise with common goals in line
with their identified social vision and the appropriate means to
attain the same.
Understanding the Social Vision of Islam
Today it is essential for the Sri Lankan Muslim mind to re-visit their
understanding of the social vision revealed in the scriptures of
Quran and the tradition of the Prophet Mohamed. Centuries of
subjectively defensive and victimized understanding of religious
and cultural practices by the Muslim mind have resulted in a loss
of focus on the objective take of Islam and its teaching of
immutable values. The ongoing call for reforming the Muslim
personal law and the reaction of the Muslim community, including
demand for application of lump sum of laws pertaining to 8th and
9th century addressed by four Imaams schools of thought on law
and Jurisprudence, shows that there is a disconnect between the
understanding of the hierarchy between the social vision and the
Islamic legal values that are immutable with that goals and
means that are contextual. Today the Muslim mind in particular is
in dire need of reconciling the journey between the immutable
values carried in the Quranic teaching and prophetic tradition of
5thcentury, passing the 8th and 9th centuries to the present
21st century without any discontinuity. In fact those Quranic
teachings of the 5th century itself endorses the immutable values
of justice, freedom, protection, dignity as their fundamental
theme, throughout the human history with diverse laws and
jurisprudence of various contexts.
The prime reason for letting the various interpretations open to
the Quranic text and prophetic tradition over 14 centuries is to
ensure the continuation of identification of immutable values and
flexibility to struggle at varying context for the attainment of the
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Skanthakumar, B., 2003. The Duty to Protect: Muslim
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Thambiah, H. W., 2004. The Laws and Customs of the
Tamils of Jaffna. Colombo: Womens Education and Research
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Weeramantry, C., 1988. slamic Jurisprudence: An
International Perspective. New Youk: St. Martins Press.
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