Abstract Prosecutor v Al Mahdi (Al Mahdi) has repeatedly been criticized as a “missed opportunity” for the International Criminal Court (ICC) to engage with Islamic law. However, an in-depth analysis of trial transcripts reveals that the ICC is already deeply engaged with Islamic normativity, albeit in ways that reproduce colonial patterns of recognition: it refuses to recognize the jihadist institutions as a legal order while simultaneously validating Sufi religious practices as authentically Islamic. Combining a praxeological law-in-action approach with scholarship on legal pluralism and colonial recognition, we argue that the ICC cannot adjudicate such cases without making implicit determinations about legitimate and illegitimate forms of Islamic practice. In our view, Al Mahdi thus reveals the inherent limitations of international criminal law when confronted with alternative normative orders. The politics of recognition at work here echo colonial practice, demonstrating how international criminal justice transforms and reifies the very normative systems it claims to engage with.
D’hondt et al. (2026) studied this question.