Saudi businessman donates $10m for Islamic Law Center at Yale

Yale University hopes to have the best programme for Islamic law in the United States


Web Desk September 13, 2015
PHOTO: YALE

A Saudi businessman has donated $10 million to Yale Law School to establish a centre for the study of Islamic law.

Abdallah S Kamel donated the money after meetings with representatives of the university, including Yale President Peter Salovey.

Yale officials believe the Abdallah S Kamel Center for the Study of Islamic Law and Civilisation will become the top center for the study of Islamic law in the Unites States. Further, they said the center reflects a mounting interest in Islamic law, culture and history at Yale and other institutions.

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“The contemporary challenges of Islamic law are broadly relevant to political events throughout the entire Islamic world and those are developments that are watched by a much larger audience of people who in many cases have not much knowledge at all of the history and traditions if Islamic law,” Professor Anthony Kronman, a co-director of the centre said.

Kronman was first introduced to Kamel by a Yale law graduate who worked for the Saudi businessman.

While Harvard Law School also has an Islamic legal studies programme established with help from the Saudi King.

Abdullahi An-Na'im, a teacher of Islamic law at Emory Law School, who finds the Islamic legal studies programme at Harvard a disappointment said it remains to be seen whether the Islamic law as a field of human jurisprudence will be taken seriously at Yale.

However, Kronman said Yale aims to have the best programme of its kind in the United States, if not the world, and one objective is to ensure the center's work is integrated into the life of the law school.

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"It's the responsibility of universities to teach and instruct and that obligation applies with particular force where an issue or a subject tends to be viewed in an incomplete or inadequate or even caricatured way," Kronman said. "There the responsibility to teach and enlighten is even stronger."

The centre intends to support research fellowships, tenured professorship in the field of Islamic law as well as a rotation of visiting professors.

This article originally appeared on ABC NEWS.

COMMENTS (3)

Bairooni Haath | 8 years ago | Reply And not a penny for the Syrian refugees.
Bairooni Haath | 8 years ago | Reply A study revealed that most Latin American dictators were educated in US military schools. Maybe the US will produce the next generation of middle eastern tyrants.
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