Concentrating on the concept of law and its “glocal” translations, this book advocates a praxeological sociohistorical jurisprudence. It seeks to bypass at least two dichotomies opposing, on the one hand, lawyers’ law in books and anthropologists’ law in action, and, on the other, positivist and realist sociolegal theories. From such a perspective, law is a concept whose historical and practical ontology can be studied through the positivization process that transformed it into a major social engineering tool. The book is a contribution to the praxeological sociohistorical study of positive law, in both its global and its local dimensions. It approaches the subject from the viewpoint of Muslim societies. In other words, it addresses the phenomenon of positive law from the perspective of societies in which Islamic norms had an all-pervading though diverse influence. It shows both how positive law “glocalized” in societies characterized as Muslim and how, by the same token, Islamic norms became positivized.

This chapter deals with the relationship of the particular to the general in the practice of law in three stages. It begins by examining the conception of the rule and its general and abstract character in the doctrine and theory of law. It then “re-specifies” the question from a praxeological viewpoint; that is to say it deals with it from the point of view of practitioners and users of law. Finally, it addresses the issue of Islam in French public and legal life, through the so-called “burkini affaire” and the resulting judgment of the Council of State (Conseil d’État), which gives us the opportunity to examine how the question of the general and particular dimensions of the legal rule applies in context, contingently, at three levels: that of “public opinion,” which is polarized around the question of the degree of particularism admissible in public life; that of the regulatory authority, which establishes a rule starting from a particular case; and that of the judging authority, which decides a particular case on the basis of general rules.

We want to describe how judges play by, and with, legal rules. It appears that, on the one hand, even in cases in which the legal basis is thin or absent, judges seek rules on which to base their decisions. In that sense, judges are positivist legal practitioners who need legal rules to perform their professional duties. On the other hand, however, moral considerations seem to deeply influence the same judges’ legal cognition. We aim to show how this unfolds in the concrete settings of four countries – Indonesia, Lebanon, Egypt, and Senegal – in cases relating to male homosexuality. First, we outline the legal and judicial frameworks of the four countries being studied. Second, we concentrate on cases in these countries related to homosexuality. On the basis of these court cases, third, we analyze the reference to rules as the core of the life of law, although in a qualified manner. Finally, we draw together the main lines of the debate regarding rules, their indeterminacy and their interpretation, stressing the usefulness of a praxeological treatment centered on reasoning, justification, and decision-making practices to better understand the ways in which law lives through rules.