Hassan Rezaei

Expert in rule of law and a researcher in Iranian and Islamic Criminal Justice

I am born in 1970, in Dashtestan- Iran. I completed a BA and LLM in Islamic Studies and Criminal Law in Iran and a PhD in Iran and Germany (2002). My academic studies was focused on the interrelationships of Islamic jurisprudence and modern criminal law. Since 1999, I have continued my work in Freiburg at the Max-Planck Institute, where I am now a postdoctoral fellow in comparative criminal law and criminology. Based in Freiburg, since 2003 I have been directing the project entitled "Iran-German Dialogue on Crime, Criminal Justice and Criminology"
From 1995 to 2002 I have been doing study and research on the question of stability and change in Islamic criminal justice (1995-1998 for MA and 1998-2002 for my Ph.D) with a comparative view. The thesis argue that if we are to understand how Islamic states operate in real politics we should focus on a critical assessment of the origins of Islamic law and its relation to political power in the modern Muslim majority societies. It means without a profound understanding of legal and political tradition in Islam we cannot hope to quell the region’s intolerable level of violence.

Since 2002, therefore, I have focused on the topic of violent conflict in the Middle Eastern societies and the role played by Muslim jurists, rulers, and theologians. My research has touched on various aspects of criminal law and criminal policy in dealing with violence in such Muslim societies of the Middle East.
At the Max Planck Institute for foreign and international criminal law in Freiburg, I worked as project fellow for the research project “Violent Conflicts in the Middle East,” which looked at indigenous alternatives to criminal punishment in different cultures. Our goal was to deepen the understanding of the role and interconnections among culture, religion, and the state when dealing with violent conflict in this challenged region. We sought to define existing mechanisms, both formal and informal, for resolving violent disputes, and so considered mediation, arbitration, customary justice, indigenous practices, and traditional methods of reconciliation used to facilitate coexistence and peace and to redress wrongs done to victims. In addition, while at the Max Planck Institute I helped organize two international conferences on this topic, one in Turkey (Istanbul 2003) and one in Germany (Bamberg 2004), which brought together a good number of Middle Eastern scholars working on conflict resolution. The results of this program was published under this title: H. Rezaei et al (Hrsg.) Conflicts and Conflict Resolution in Middle Eastern Societies - Between Tradition and Modernity, Max-Planck Institut and Duncker & Humblot, Freiburg and Berlin, April 2006.
In 2006-2008 I was a post doctoral fellow in sentencing and sanction system in the Middle Eastern societies with focus on the role of Sharia criminal law in post revolutionary Iran.
In 2004-2005 I was a Rockefeller Fellow at the Library of Congress's Kluge Center, where I studied the effects of Sharia criminal law in the context of modern Muslim societies.

I have published a book and several articles and research reports in English, Arabic and Persian concerning the Role of Exigencies of Time and Space in the Development of Islamic Criminal Law, Islamic Criminal Law in modern world, Islamization of Justice System in Iran, Sharia in Cyberspace, Maslaha in Islamic Jurisprudence and Violence against Women in Fundamentalist Readings of Sharia.

From June 2008 to September 2011 I was affiliated with the UNDP and UNAMA in Afghanistan as Rule of Law officer and Provincial Justice Reconstruction Coordinator in Northwest Region of the country.

Currenntly, based in Freiburg, I am working on a manuscript about stability and change in Islamic and Iranian criminal law.