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Two recent judgments in Northern Nigeria have focussed attention on one of the many essential differences between the type of homicide for which the death penalty can properly be imposed under the Islamic law of the Maliki school and the crime of murder under the Criminal Code, and have thrown into bold relief the conflict of opinion which still prevails in that Region regarding the legislation which was intended to resolve some of these differences. These two judgments are of such intrinsic interest and importance that some discussion of their principles and implications seems appropriate to this Journal.

There can be no doubt that British courts have, in general, built up a most impressive record by, and today enjoy a well-deserved reputation for, their sympathetic and intelligent application of those religious or customary laws, evolved by peoples of a culture and background very different from their own, which they have so often been called upon to administer. But there can be no branch of the law in which Muslim peoples who are subject to the jurisdiction of British courts, or courts trained in English traditions, have been made to suffer so many frustrations—by the judicial infusion of alien ideas, by misinterpretation or basic ignorance of the Islamic doctrines, and even by what can only be termed a rigidity of mind which ill-accords with this illustrious tradition—as in the law of waqf.

Two recent decisions of the Court of Appeal for Eastern Africa, both concerned with Isma‘ili Khojas, have implications which extend far beyond the Khoja community. Both these cases seem to involve issues of such importance as to merit consideration and discussion in this Journal.

On 13 Jumādā I, 1377 (6 December, 1957), the Arabic edition of the Official Bulletin of Morocco2 published a Zahīr3 of 28 Rabi’ II, 1377 (22 November, 1957), which not only announced that a series of books covering matters of personal status and inheritance would be published (to constitute, when complete, a “Code of Personal Status and Inheritance” ), but that the first two books in this series—which were attached to the Zahīr and which covered the law of marriage and its dissolution, respectively —were to be brought into force throughout the Kingdom from 1 January, 1958.