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Muslim plaintiff Iqbal Sulehria sued his employer, the New York City Department of Correction, and related officials under Title VII, §1983, and New York State and City anti-discrimination laws, alleging religious and national origin discrimination as well as retaliation for filing a claim with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and through the prison administration. Specifically, the plaintiff claimed that his co-workers and managers harassed him for being Muslim after the events of 9/11. The harassment consisted of verbal taunts, intrusive searches, withholding promotions, denying him use of the bathroom, forcing him to work in substandard conditions, and having his face imposed on the body of Osama bin Laden in photos left on the plaintiff’s desk. The Court upheld a magistrate judge’s report granting the City partial summary judgment, dismissing the retaliation and failure-to-promote claims, because the Court found that the plaintiff failed to establish a prima facie case; however, the Court denied the City’s motion for summary judgment as to the hostile work environment claim, concluding that a jury could see the events as alleged to be severe and pervasive enough to allow the claim to go forward.

This Country Profile provides a basic overview of the legal history and institutional structures of the Republic of Uzbekistan (O'zbekiston Respublikasi), based on research produced by GlobaLex at NYU Law School and the Library of Congress. Under Uzbekistan's Constitution, Islamic law (sharīʿa or fiqh) has no legal status. 

The parties were married on 15 November 2000 and had four children. At the time of the proceeding, the defendant was serving an eight-month prison sentence for having beaten the plaintiff on 25 October 2014. The plaintiff submitted that entering the third year of their marriage, the parties had begun to quarrel regularly. This was due to:

1. a difference of opinion over domestic matters;
2. the defendant's insistence on using profane language and physically assaulting the plaintiff when they would argue, resulting in the plaintiff having to see a psychologist; and
3. the defendant having carried on an extra-marital affair with another woman, to whom he had also provided financial assistance.

The parties had been separated, as a result, since November 2014. The plaintiff, therefore, requested that the court grant her an irrevocable divorce (talak satu ba'in sughra), and that it order the defendant to provide her with maintenance back-payments.

The court found that the marriage could no longer fulfil the purposes of marriage as envisaged in art 1 of Law No. 1 of 1974 on Marriage, and art 3 of the Compilation of Islamic Laws. It was, therefore, satisfied that the plaintiff had met the evidentiary burden contained in art 39(2) of Law No. 1 of 1974, and, pursuant to art 19(f) of Government Regulation No. 9 of 1975, and art 116(f) of the Compilation of Islamic Laws, acceded to the plaintiff's request for an irrevocable divorce (talak satu ba'in sughra) on the grounds of ongoing conflict.

The court also cited fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence) from Kitab Al Muhadzdzab juz II, page 164, and Kitab l'anatut Thalibin, page 85, both of which state that a husband is to provide maintenance back-payments to his wife in the event he had neglected to provide for her and their children for a period. It distinguished this fiqh, however, on the grounds that the parties had been separated for that time. In regards to the parties' four children, the court ordered that the two children under the age of 12 (belum mumayyiz) remain in the custody of the plaintiff. Accordingly, it ordered the defendant to pay to the plaintiff at least IDR 800,000 per month until the children reach the age of 21.

The parties were married on 25 August 2008 (NB: the court's findings state they were married on 21 August 2008) and had two children. The plaintiff submitted that eight months into her first pregnancy the parties had quarrelled and the defendant had grabbed and pushed her to the floor with utter disregard. At the time, the plaintiff reported the defendant to the authorities for acts of domestic violence, however, the defendant fled for Bombana in search of gold and his parents. The plaintiff's parents advised her to reconcile with the defendant and to withdraw her police report, which the plaintiff did for the sake of the parties' marriage.

In 2011, the parties appeared to have reconciled their differences, already having had their first child. The defendant then proceeded to have an extra-marital affair with another woman, while choosing to spend all his income on this other woman and none on the plaintiff. The plaintiff also submitted that during an encounter with the other woman, she had learned that the defendant had been carrying on this extra-marital affair while the plaintiff was pregnant.

The defendant had also been incarcerated for transporting petroleum. Upon his release from prison, the plaintiff began working at Kredit Colombus (a credit company) to make ends meet. When the defendant, however, forbid her from working the parties had begun to quarrel again. The plaintiff submitted that their disputes were also the result of the defendant:

1. demanding that the plaintiff return to him the spending money with which he had provided her, if he himself had run out of money;
2. forbidding, and becoming angry with, the plaintiff from working to pay for domestic household needs;
3. damaging the plaintiff's belongings and that of the household when he became angry;
4. physically assaulting the plaintiff when he became jealous for no established reason;
5. often threatening the plaintiff, causing her great fear and trauma;
6. regularly instructing the plaintiff to divorce him; and
7. controlling the parties' finances and only providing the plaintiff with money when she needed/requested it.

While the parties' families had endeavoured to make the parties reconcile, following Eid Mubarak in 2014, the plaintiff left the defendant and returned to her parents' home, where she had remained until the time of the court proceeding. During that time, the defendant continued to terrorise and threaten the plaintiff, leaving the plaintiff with no other option but to seek an irrevocable divorce (talak satu ba'in shughra). The plaintiff also sought custody of the parties' two young children, as well as IDR 1.5 million per month in child maintenance until the children were adult and independent.

The court deferred to expert Islamic legal opinion in Kitab Ia'natul Thalibin Juz III, which dictates that a court is to grant a wife a divorce if she is no longer happy with her husband. Moreover, citing art 39 of Law No. 1 of 1974 on Marriage, art 65 of Law No. 7 of 1989 on the Religious Judiciary, and art 5 of Law No. 23 of 2004 on the Abolition of Domestic Violence, the court acceded to the plaintiff's request. In its findings, however, it did not explicitly accede to the plaintiff's request for child maintenance payments.

A Toledan man named Ibn Ḥātim was accused of being a heretic by sixty witnesses on the initiative of a fellow Toledan called Ibn Labīd al-Murābiṭ. The judge consulted with the local jurists, and following their legal opinions, he sentenced the accused to death. However, he granted the accused the right to challenge the witnesses (iʿdhār). Ibn Ḥātim escaped from Toledo and found refuge in the neighboring kingdom of Badajoz. Ibn Labīd went after him, carrying a copy of the judge’s sentence (tasjīl) along with the legal opinions of a number of non-Toledan jurists. In Badajoz, the ruler withdrew his support from Ibn Ḥātim, who fled again, this time to Cordoba. While in Cordoba, the “moral” police arrested Ibn Ḥātim, and the judge imprisoned him, giving him two months to prove his innocence. Unable to do so, Ibn Ḥātim was crucified alive. A number of legal issues arise in the course of this case: should the process of iʽdhār—the right to challenge witnesses—be granted to those accused of heresy (zandaqa)? Should refuge be granted to them? What happens with the estate or inheritance of an executed zindīq? Can a judge reverse a sentence given by another judge? The source is a collection of court cases by Andalusi scholar Ibn Sahl (d. 486/1093), and it is based on information directly available to the compiler, who was also a witness of most of the events described.

This document is a beyānnāme, or declaration, sent by the Ottoman reʾīsül-kuttāb (chief scribe) to Britain's ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, justifying the Ottoman declaration of war on Russia by explaining Russia's violation of treaty obligations. The document gives insight into eighteenth-century Ottoman attitudes to international law and its relationship with Islamic law. Its use of the phrase naḳż-ı ʿahd (breaking the treaty), which has its origins in a specifically Qurʾānic context illustrates one way in which war was legitimized within the Ottoman Empire. Other phrases used in the beyānnāme demonstrate how Ottoman legal plurality functioned within a martial context. 

Chapters on nominate contracts (endowment, sales, options, barter/ mu‘āwaḍa, hire and lease, partnerships -shirka, muzāra‘a, musāqāt, muḍāraba-, reward/ju‘āla, deposit, fungible and non-fungible loan, agency, financial and personal guaranty, assignment, settlement, pledge, gift), shuf‘a, wills, inheritance, marriage and divorce, mahr, and alimony took almost all of its substance from prominent Shi’i fiqh treatises. Other chapters (classification of properties, easement, usufruct, general rules of obligations and contracts, nationality, registration of civil status, domicile, engagement, guardianship, and evidence) are mainly influenced by Swiss and French Civil Codes and Swiss Code of Obligations.