Abstract
In the early period, just as it used to be the practice in Islam, envoys were assigned tasks abroad, and once these tasks have been accomplished, the envoys were to return home immediately.1 The beginning of the sixteenth century marked the establishment of permanent diplomatic missions, particularly among European nations.2 The necessity to formulate “suitable immunities and privileges”3 with cogent legal justification for undertaking diplomatic activities became imperative. The rationale for the inviolability and jurisdictional immunity accorded foreign representatives, along with their diplomatic premises, can be traced back to three popular theoretical justifications of diplomatic immunity—exterritoriality,4 representative character, and functional necessity.5 Extensive scholarly discussions have been recorded on the theoretical justifications of diplomatic immunity. It is in light of the above that this chapter intends to examine these justifications with a view to extracting a common theoretical basis for diplomatic inviolability and in Islamic diplomatic law and international diplomatic law. This chapter also on the one hand examines the different forms of diplomatic privileges, immunity, and facilities at diplomatic missions and their various personnel as understood under international diplomatic law, and on the other hand considers whether under Islamic diplomatic law, the concept of diplomatic immunity exists, particularly from perspective of the making of the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah (628 AD).
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Notes
B. Sen, A Diplomat’s Handbook of International Law and Practice (Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1988), p. 6.
F. Przetacznik, “The History of the Jurisdictional Immunity of the Diplomatic Agents in English Law,” Anglo-American Law Reveiw 7 (1978), p. 353.
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C.J. Lewis, State and Diplomatic Immunity, 3rd ed. (London: Lloyd’s of London, 1990), p. 135. The ILC, long before the Vienna Conference for Diplomatic Intercourse and Immunities, a Conference that ushered in the VCDR, has maintained that personal inviolability does not exclude self-defense and, in exceptional circumstances, other measures to prevent a diplomat from committing a crime. See R. Vark, op. cit., p. 111; ILC Yearbook, 2 (1958), p. 97.
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See I. Shihata, “Islamic Law and the World Community,” Harv. Int’l Club J., 4 (1962), p. 109.
A. Iqbal, The Prophet’s Diplomacy: The Art of Negotiation as Conceived and Developed by the Prophet of Islam (Cape Cod, MA: Claude Stark & Co., 1975), pp. 54–55.
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See F. Malekian, Principles of Islamic International Criminal Law: A Comparative Search, 2nd ed. (Leiden: Koninklijke Brill NV, 2011), p. 112.
See M.C. Bassiouni, The Shari’a and Islamic Criminal Justice in Time of War and Peace (Cambridge: CUP, 2014), p. 128. See also A.A.T. Vivian, Beating Women Is Forbidden in Islam (Athens: European Research Islamic Centre), p. 5.
Y. Al-Qaradawi, The Lawful and the Prohibited in Islam (Selangor, Malaysia: Islamic Book Trust, 2013), pp. 5–6.
N. Yakoob and A. Mir, op. cit., in Y.Y. Haddad and B.F. Stowasser (eds.), Islamic Law and the Challenges of Modernity (Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press, 2004), p. 109. See generally L.A. Bsoul, op. cit., pp. 141–143.
A.K.S. Lambton, State and Government in Medieval Islam: An Introduction to the Study of Islamic Political Theory: The Jurists (Oxford: OUP, 1981), p. 209–210.
B. Lewis, The Political Language of Islam (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), p. 76.
See also S. Mahmassani, op. cit., in Hague Academy of International Law, Recueil Des Cours: Vol. 117 1966/I (Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1968), p. 266.
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© 2016 Muhammad-Basheer A. Ismail
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Ismail, MB.A. (2016). A General Overview of Diplomatic Immunity in International Diplomatic Law and Islamic Law. In: Islamic Law and Transnational Diplomatic Law. Philosophy, Public Policy, and Transnational Law. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137558770_4
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