By Yasser Latif Hamdani
One of the first things that will strike a student of law is that the English common law tradition, which informs the legal systems of India and Pakistan, is at variance with the established Roman law that informed much of the non-English-speaking Western world. At the same time, common law has parallels with the classical tradition of Islamic law as it developed in and around Al Azhar at the beginning of the middle ages. Like English common law, the Islamic equivalent relies largely on precedent and the legal opinions of jurists. Ijtehad, that is, reinterpretation; Ijmah, that is, consensus; and Qiyas, that is, analogy, form the basis of an opinion or decision. The last of these is not unknown to those who have practiced law in common law jurisdictions.
