Is Justice the Same Everywhere?

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Professor Sohail Hashmi Examines International Law and Islam
In ancient Islamic culture, the tradition of rihla involved seeking knowledge through travel. Scholars journeyed, often for years, through the Muslim world learning about history, religious practices and interpretations, social customs, trade, travel conditions, and geography. Their stories were recorded, becoming the scholarly accounts and travelogs of the day.

Mount Holyoke's Sohail Hashmi, associate professor of international relations, set out on his own version of such a journey in 1990. In four years and four separate forays, he visited nine countries—from Morocco to Malaysia.

"It gave me the opportunity to travel to the farthest reaches of the Muslim world and to speak with leading scholars at the centers of Islamic learning," says Hashmi, a practicing Sunni Muslim who was raised in America's Baptist South. Today, in a world where issues surrounding Islam have assumed preeminent importance, he is a leading scholar in the field of Islamic politics and law, as well as international ethics.

In 2005, the Carnegie Corporation of New York named Hashmi as one of 16 Carnegie Scholars, drawn from a wide range of institutions to focus attention on Islam and the modern world. Hashmi will examine the compatibility of classical and modern Islamic legal theory with the contemporary international system, and the ramifications of Muslim accommodations to this system.

These complex issues only add to the range of thorny topics Hashmi has considered, including the idea of jihad or "just war," the ethics of nuclear deterrence, and the ethics of intervention in cases of massive violations of human rights.