Las transacciones internacionales de comercio e inversiones en los países del Golfo: entre la Sharia y la "Lex mercatoria"

Abstract

Over the last few decades there have been growing commer-cial interaction between Western companies and their Middle Eastern counterparts. Given this interaction and the great geo-political and economic importance of this region, it is imperative that Western lawyers and dispute resolution professionals have a reasonable grasp of the general principles of Shari‟ a or Islamic law, a source (to varying degrees) of law in most nations in the Middle East. It is clear that the increase in international commer-cial transactions has contributed to the globalization of the legal community, but it is disturbing that there has been very little ex-amination of the influence and impact on the Middle East‟s legal system‟s religious underpinnings upon the continued acceptance of international commercial arbitration. Given the growing calls for a return to the Sharia and increasing global interdependence, the western legal community can no longer be satisfied to leave the Sharia as a preserve of Middle East specialists, Arabists and comparative law experts. It is a trite observation that cultural or more aptly in the Middle East, religious considerations, can play a vital role in the acceptance and successful functioning of interna-tional commercial arbitration...