UCLA Journal of Islamic and Near Eastern Law (J I N E L)

Published Since: 2002

The UCLA Journal of Islamic and Near Eastern Law (JINEL) is published twice a year. As the first law school journal in the West dealing with this topic, JINEL’s goal is to emphasize and critically analyze all legal issues--social, political, civil, historical, economic, and commercial--that are of particular relevance to Muslims and Near Easterners in both Muslim and non-Muslim societies. Thus:

• we will present issues relating to the laws of the Near East and their effects on the people and countries of the region and worldwide;
• we will present issues relating to the theoretical aspects of Islamic law and jurisprudence, and its application;
• we will discuss laws as they have affected the people of the Near East outside the region.

Because the Near East is not a static geographical region, JINEL has adopted the broad policy of looking at each submission on a case-by-case basis and within the context of history to determine its relevance.

Areas of traditional study (e.g., the Arabian Peninsula, the Iranian Plateau) will of course be included, yet we will not overlook areas of study that have had a significant impact on, and been acculturated in one way or another into the region (e.g., North Africa and Central and South Asia).

Spring 2011 Special Issue

This semester, we will be publishing a special issue on the Criminalization of Islamic Philanthropy and Terrorism Financing. The issue will publish the work of key scholars and practitioners of international law, national security and civil rights law, sociology, ethnography and anthropology. The journal began work on this understudied topic with a symposium event held at the law school in April 2010. This issue will be the first collection of scholarship on this topic in the country.

In its attempts to combat terrorism, the U.S. government and the international community have viewed curtailing the means through which terrorist organizations finance both their violent operations and their non-violent political work as a top priority. These efforts have resulted in an unclear standard for charitable organizations interested in providing aid to besieged populations, especially in Muslim majority countries. Several Muslim charities and alms-giving networks have been shut down due to government accusations of material support to terrorism and hundreds of civil society organizations, groups and individual have also been tainted because of association with these charities. This volume of the Journal of Islamic and Near Eastern Law will explore the effects of this policy on Muslim charitable giving, the Islamic religious obligation to give alms, connections between the Muslim-American community and Muslim communities overseas and the freedoms of speech and association.

Staff

Editors-in-Chief
Shahram Samie
Sireen Sawaf

Chief Articles Editor
Yasmin Elhady

Chief Managing Editor
Stephen Araiza

Chief Productions Editor
Aziz Ahmad

Chief Comments Editor
Ali Tehrani

Business Manager
Azil Virji

Articles Editors
Aziz Ahmad
Josh Markovitz
Fawad Shaiq

Comments Editor
Michael Sier
Managing Editor
Justin Smith

Resources

ISSN (Print): 1536-5107

Website: http://www.law.ucla.edu/jinel

Contact

Email: jinel@lawnet.ucla.edu

UCLA Journal of Islamic and Near Eastern Law
405 Hilgard Avenue
Los Angeles , CA 90095-1467