| As originally enacted, Article 2 of the Egyptian Constitution contained the following clause: "the principles of the Islamic Shari`a are a chief source of legislation" (mabadi' al-Shari`a al-Islamiya mas&dotbelow;dar ra'isi li'l-tashri`). Under pressure from Islamists in 1980, the government of Egypt amended this article to read, "the principles of the Islamic Shari`a are the chief source of legislation" ( mabadi' al-Shari`a al-Islamiya al-mas&dotbelow;dar al-ra'isi li'l-tashri`). The text and legislative history of the amendment suggest that it requires all Egyptian law to be consistent with Islamic Shari`a. These sources do not explain, however, what the term "Islamic Shari`a" means, and the Supreme Constitutional Court of Egypt (the SCC), the authoritative interpreter of the Egyptian Constitution, thus has had great difficulty interpreting and applying the article as amended.;This dissertation examines the amendment of Article 2 and the SCC's interpretation of the article as amended. The history of Article 2 and its judicial interpretation must be understood in a broader historical context. In nineteenth-century Egypt, consensus broke down over what criteria positive legislation must meet to be considered Islamic. Thus, although many Egyptian Muslims have called for their government to promulgate Islamic legislation, there has been little consensus about how to distinguish Islamic legislation from non-Islamic. The vagueness of Article 2 as amended, the initial judicial disinclination to interpret the article, and the continuing difficulties that judges have had in applying it, all grow out of the very serious disagreement that has erupted in modern Egypt about Islamic legal and political theory. By locating the history of Article 2 in its proper historical context and performing a close reading of the SCC's opinions, this dissertation shows that the struggle to interpret Article 2 reveals much about political Islam in the contemporary world, and the difficulties that governments of predominantly Muslim countries face in responding to its demands. |
