Mohammad Fadel
78 Queen's Park
Education
B.A., University of Virginia (1988)
Ph.D., University of Chicago (1995)
J.D., University of Virginia (1999)
Overview
Mohammad H. Fadel is a Professor at the Faculty of Law, which he joined in January 2006. Prior to joining the Faculty, Professor Fadel clerked for two United States federal courts and practiced law in New York. Professor Fadel has published numerous articles and books in Islamic legal history, Islamic law and jurisprudence, Islam and liberalism and Palestine and international law.
Areas of Interest
- Business Law
- Family & Children's Law
- International Law & Policy
- Law & Economics
- Law & Religion
Teaching
Fall Session
Selected Publications
Fadel, M. (2025). Doctrinal change in Mālikī law: the case of judicial divorce on account of harm (Ḍarar). Comparative Legal History, 13(2), 190–221. https://doi.org/10.1080/2049677X.2025.2579343
Shāfiʿī, God’s Rule (ḥukm allāh) and the Turn to Theology, in I. Nassery and M. Tatari (Eds.) Dynamics of Tradition Islamic Theology and Law in Relation, Chapter 6, Series: Studies in Islamic Law and Society, Volume 57, Brill, 2025.
"Law Breaking, Law Making and International Law: Palestine, Israel and the Foundations of International Law", Virginia Journal of International Law, 65 Va. J. Int'l. L. (Online) 2024.
Sovereignty, Territoriality, and Private International Law in Classical Muslim International Law, The American Journal of Comparative Law, Volume 71, Issue 4, Winter 2023, Pages 853–899, https://doi.org/10.1093/ajcl/avae007
"Maṣlaḥa as “Flourishing” and Its Place in Sunnī Political Thought", (2022) Journal of Islamic Ethics. 1-31. DOI: 10.1163/24685542-12340085.
"Muslim Modernism, Islamic Law, and the Universality of Human Rights", 36 Emory Int'l L. Rev. 713 (2022).
“DNA Evidence and the Islamic Law of Paternity in Light of Maqāṣid al- Sharīʿa” , The Muslim World, Special Issue: Family Structure in the wake of Genetic and Reproductive Technologies in the Muslim World, Vol. 112, Issue 3, Summer 2022, pp. 311-323.
"The Challenges of Islamic Law Adjudication in Public Reason", in S. Langvatn, M. Kumm, & W. Sadurski (Eds.), Public Reason and Courts (Studies on International Courts and Tribunals, pp. 115-142). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. doi:10.1017/9781108766579.006.
"The True, the Good and the Reasonable: The Theological and Ethical Roots of Public Reason in Islamic Law" (2008) 21:1 Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence 5.
"Public Reason as a Strategy for Principled Reconciliation: The Case of Islamic Law and International Human Rights" 8(1) Chicago Journal of International Law 1 (Summer 2007).
"Back to the Future: The paradoxical Revival of Aspirations for an Islamic State," 14(1) Review of Constitutional Studies (2009).
"Political Liberalism, Islamic Family Law and Family Law Pluralism: Lessons from New York on Family Law Arbitration," in Marriage and Divorce in a Multi-Cultural Context: Reconsidering the Boundaries of Civil Law and Religion, ed. Joel Nichols, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011).
"Muslim Reformists, Female Citizenship and the Public Accommodation of Islam in Liberal Democracy," Politics and Religion, 5 (2012), 2–35. (link to Journal)
See also Professor Fadel's SSRN page.
Cross-appointed in the Department of Religion and the Department of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations
Canada Research Chair (2006, 2011)