Title: A glance at unfair terms in consumer transactions in Arab legal systems and Islamic law: what Arab lawyers can learn from the European experience?

Authors: Mahmoud Fayyad

Addresses: Faculty of Law, Al-Quds University, Jerusalem Beit Hanina, P.O. Box 51000, Palestine

Abstract: The first decade of the 21st century demonstrated significant legal activities in the area of consumer protection in many Arab legal systems. The declared objectives require breaking down the use of unfair terms in market transactions. Islamic law, a legal base of these legal systems, provides many guidelines and general rules that can, directly and indirectly, get over the use of these terms. This paper will discuss the issue of to what the extent the rules of Arab regulations deal with the use of unfair terms in consumer transactions. It will compare it with the European Directive on Unfair Terms in consumer contracts and determine how the Directive can be adopted by the Arab countries without violating the general principles of Islamic law. To recommend the implementation of the European measures in Arab legal systems, it is important to detect the supporting and contradicting points in the Arab legal systems, including Islamic rules.

Keywords: unfair terms; contract terms; Islamic law; consumer protection; unfair terms; Islam; Arab law; consumer rights; consumer transactions; legal systems; lawyers; market transactions; regulations; consumers; consumer contracts; EC Directives; EU; European Union; European Commission; supporting points; contradicting points; Islamic rules; Tunisia; Lebanon; Palestine; Egypt; UAE; United Arab Emirates; Qatar; Syria; Iraq; Jordan; private law.

DOI: 10.1504/IJPL.2012.046061

International Journal of Private Law, 2012 Vol.5 No.2, pp.200 - 227

Published online: 20 Sep 2014 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article