Uganda’s Qadhis Courts Bill
Can Sharia be Universal?
Uganda’s Qadhis Courts Bill, published in the Uganda Gazette on February 27, 2026, is intended to establish a nationwide system of Sharia-based courts with jurisdiction over personal law matters, including marriage, divorce, child custody, and inheritance.
The concerns being raised by several organisations are legitimate and grounded in specific institutional design issues: The Qadhis Courts Bill grants courts “exclusive authority over personal law matters involving Muslims,” but crucially permits Muslims to bring claims against non-Muslims, including Christians, under the Sharia system. This means a Christian defendant could be compelled to appear before an Islamic court without consent, a departure from Kenya’s voluntary model.
Appeals go to Uganda’s High Court but must be heard by “a Muslim judge and four Muslim scholars,” with “no further appeals available” to regular courts. This creates a closed system where Islamic jurisprudence operates outside secular constitutional review. The bill also fails to address conflicts between Sharia provisions –such as marriage age or testimony weight– and Uganda’s Constitution, which guarantees equality before the law and sets the minimum marriage age at 18.
These are problems with the implementation, not necessarily with the principle of Islamic jurisprudence itself
The reality is more nuanced: Sharia law, properly understood, is intended to be universal. Islamic jurisprudence has always grappled with questions of applicability across diverse populations, contexts, and belief systems. From the earliest days of Islamic governance, scholars debated how Sharia should interface with non-Muslim populations living under Islamic states, and they arrived at sophisticated answers. Rather, the conversation should be around another essential question: which interpretation of Sharia is being discussed, and how to ensure that whatever framework is used protects the fundamental rights of all people, regardless of faith.
The problem Uganda faces isn’t that Sharia is being applied universally; rather, the bill doesn’t specify which interpretive tradition it follows.
This matters enormously. All interpretive traditions diverge significantly on personal law. The Hanafi school, historically applied in Ottoman territories, generally requires the consent of both parties to marriage and recognizes greater flexibility in dissolution. The Maliki school, predominant in West Africa, takes stricter positions on divorce and succession. Shafi’i jurisprudence, influential in East Africa, has specific requirements for testimony and inheritance that differ from Hanafi precedent.
Uganda’s Muslim community itself isn’t monolithic. The Uganda Muslim Supreme Council coordinates multiple Islamic organizations, but which one does the bill adopt? If undefined, courts risk applying an amalgamated or locally invented interpretation that lacks scholarly grounding. If specifically Shafi’i (given East African prevalence), why impose one interpretive tradition on Muslims who follow others?
Where Sharia Can Be Universal: Maqasid al-Shariah
The solution to this lies in Islamic jurisprudence itself, which provides a framework for universal application: maqasid al-Shariah (the objectives of Sharia).
Maqasid scholars, from Al-Ghazali’s classical formulation to contemporary figures like Jasser Auda and Tariq Ramadan, identify five universal protective objectives: Religion (din), Life (nafs), Intellect (’aql), Property (mal), and Family (nasl). These aren’t sectarian constructs; they transcend madhab differences and provide universal criteria for evaluating legal rules.
The most logical solution will be grounding Qadhis courts in maqasid al-Shariah as the governing framework, rather than rejecting Sharia or importing specific madhab interpretations uncritically. This may require voluntary submission only, ensuring that there is no mandatory jurisdiction over non-Muslims, and explicit commitment that courts operate within Uganda’s constitutional framework on equality and freedom. This approach honors Islamic tradition by applying it according to its own deepest principles—not particular interpretations, but universal maqasid. That’s universal Sharia. Uganda should demand nothing less.