A Short Comparative Analysis of the Judges in English Common Law & Traditional Islamic Law Systems

[Bret Hawk]

Some time ago I came through an interview of the son of Dr. Allama Muhammad Iqbal, Retd Justice Dr. Javed Iqbal and quite vividly remembered about his elucidation of the primary differences between a Judge trained in British Common Law and traditional Islamic Law.

I’m going to present these videos in entirety so that the members could be able to understand the working of a very important element of a justice system since I don’t have the necessary editing skills to present the relevant content over here.

I think in the wake of Judicial Commission’s findings on the Rigging Probe of General Elections 2013 this discussion will prove to be quite fruitful to some members and will certainly help them to study this aspect of judiciary in a comparative analysis mode.

Some salient points of Dr. Javed Iqbal which I have retained in my memory are as follows;

Judge in British Common Law Under this system a judge maintains his position as a referee, like in a ping pong match where he judges the best strokes of players (Prosecution & Defense lawyers) and thus bases his verdict according to the best performance of a concerned lawyer. A judge can’t become a part of an investigation process even in the case of ambiguity and thus could dissolve the case as inconclusive due to such restriction.

Judge in Islamic Law In this system a judge remain proactive and undertake further responsibility to probe the matter in more detail and also to become a party in investigation process in order to reach to the depth of a case. A judge tries his best to reach to a conclusive judgment and employ all the available resources of state in order to erase every trace of doubt / ambiguity of a case in hand.

Even with all of its sincerity and integrity a judge in English Common Law system proves to be ineffective and docile and not much could be expected from him in current times. I think in Pakistan a closer scrutiny should be done on the role of such ineffective position of such judges and more good elements could be incorporated from the Islamic judicial system in order to bring down the backlog of cases in our lower judiciary and also to make their work more effective & credible for the benefit of people.

Part I

Part II

 

[Alp Arsalan]

In short, what we studies in Islamic Jurisprudence. In Kafir's Law(British Common Law, French, Anglo Sexon etc) the Law is Justice and in Shariah Law, Justice is Law