Islam in the German Legal Order: Constitutional Conflicts and “Native Law”

Abstract

This chapter details how the foundational legal order for the colonies emerged from a German constitutional conflict, which led to the creation of a sphere of “native law” outside of German legislative and judicial control. Applying this fiction of “native law” to the cosmopolitan environments of the East African coast first led to a racial demarcation of who was to count as “native”, which was then further qualified by a religious dimension: “non-Mohammedan Syrians,” Parsis and Christian Goans could come under German law, whereas “Arabs” and Muslim Indians were “native” by default. The chapter also shows how the administration’s management of “native law” took little interest in Muslim judicial practices and reasoning but was instead designed to demonstrate colonial power.