California is a global village. Marriages, finance and commercial transactions are crossing borders. Not surprisingly, California courts must regularly interpret and apply foreign law — including Shari’a — to everything from the recognition of foreign divorces and custody decrees, to the validity of marriages, the terms of an Islamic finance deal, the enforcement of money judgments, or the elements of damages in a commercial dispute or a tort action. In this course, after a brief introduction of substantive Islamic family law, we will focus on what every California family attorney needs to know about Islamic family law in American courts. We will survey case law from California and around the country covering Muslim marriage contracts, international custody disputes, mahrs (dower/marriage portion), Islamic marriages absent marriage licenses, foreign divorces, foreign marriages, religious instructions in custody matters, and other related topics.