Volume: Volume 12(2) - 2008

Article type: Refereed article

Author/s: Olowu, Dejo

The focus of this article is to explore the critical dimensions of Islamic legal theory pertaining to the rights of children, particularly the potential of this theory to reinforce the theoretical understanding of children’s rights within the international human rights corpus. Even though there has been scholarly inertia in this field, an effort is made here to highlight Islamic legal notions in complex areas and to accentuate their capacity for deeper reflections on children’s rights within the global milieu. While broadly examining the tenets of Islamic juristic thought pertaining to children’s rights in general, the article evaluates Islamic legal understanding of the rights of the unborn child in considerable detail, without unnecessarily getting embroiled in the philosophical debates about whether an unborn child is a human being or not. Apart from the more renowned normative framework on children’s rights, it is demonstrated, Islamic law also contains extensive provisions that can reinforce global advocacy for the promotion and protection of the status, rights and welfare of children.

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