Will Islamic Water Management Principles Be Included If the Helmand River Treaty Is Revisited?
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The topic is interesting and worth exploring. However, the paper contains numerous flaws that need to be remedied.
- The arguments of the authors are purely based on their own assumption and there is no supporting data and evidence. For example, the authors state that there is strong disagreement between Iran and Taliban, but failed to prove it. At least, the authors need to cite the relevant governmental documents, position papers, spokeman' statements, or else.
- It is not clear in the paper regarding the relationship between religion and law, or Quran and international law. For example, which one is superior? As a member of the UN, can an Islamic state use Quran in rebutting the UN Charter?
- By reading the paper, there is no conflict between the Quran principles and international water law principles in the management of a tranboundary river. The two are quite conplementary each other. It is hardly understood and even illogical that the authors conclude the replacement of the latter by the former.
- The 1973 treaty of Helmand River was concluded much earlier than the 1997 UN Watercourse Convention which embodies the principles that the authors describe in the paper. It is impossible that the earlier treaty can borrow later legal principles. Nevertheless, it is interesting to discuss the revision and re-negotiation of the 1973 treaty, but first of all the authors need to demonstrate the necessity.
- The last part (5.5) of the paper is completely irelevant to the water management and should be deleted.
- There is a serious lack of references in the paper and the authors need to do much more research and get access to more literature so as to improve the quality of the paper. For example, there is a book titled Islam and International Law, which seems a indispensable reference when the authors discuss Quran and International Water Law.
Author Response
Please find the attached file
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
This is an outstanding piece of scholarship on a important, underappreciated, and timely topic. I think more discussion of the status of the UN Watercourse Convention as binding law would be helpful, as would the role of other principles of customary international environmental law and human rights law. More focus could also be applied to the extent the 1973 Helmand River Treaty remains binding (in connection with binding successor states under Gabcikovo-Nagymaros). I also think there is more to both shafa and shirb, in particular their different sectarian interpretations between Shi'ites and Sunnis, that is relevant to understanding how even Islamic states can disagree about Islamic principles of water law. But despite these (hopefully helpful) suggestions, I highly recommend publication.
Author Response
Please find the attached file
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
While the paper has improved especially in the writing and in how the results are being presented, the main flaws (in terms of research question and methodology) remain, especially with regards to what is being compared (apples and pears - see my earlier comments on this) and how this comparison is presented (value of e.g. table 2 which is not clear to me).
Reviewer 2 Report
Dear Authors,
Greetings, please note that you need to understand how to resubmit a paper. Next time, please submit proper responses to each comment in a separate file and the general cover letter may not serve as the responses to the reviewers.
You need to understand that you need to follow the proper referencing system. Since this paper deals with Islamic teachings and you have quoted Quranic verses, you need to resubmit your manuscript with proper references. Your referencing is wrong is creating a lot of trouble while reviewing the resubmitted version. For instance, you have started with citing reference number 29 in the revised version as it was in the first submission.
How come, that you have cited 23 references in the first paragraph, while that is more or less very established and generic information. This tells a lot about the quality of peer review that you have performed, you have made errors while citing these references.
The abstract should focus more on the reasons why the two management guidelines are different and what could be the potential role of regimes and people.
L 47-48: How could you cite a Quranic verse saying that the verse is describing how many times a word has been mentioned in Quran? The same is the with the next citation.
You need to differentiate the citations from Quranic verses as well as other citations. Please also mention in writing the chapter number and the verse number while citing the Quranic verses. This is because this paper is targeting the territorial arrangements that belong to more or less 100 % Muslim population. This is very sensitive. Please take care of this issue in the whole manuscript.
L 57-61: Which of the two basic notions of Sharia?
The objectives are totally out of the context of what is mentioned in the paper or what is concluded. Please edit your objectives on the basis of your main findings, whereas the right way is the base your findings in line with the leading obejctives. How could you say that "this study aims to assess the strengths and weaknesses of Islamic Water Management Principles, and to compare and contrast this set of principles with International Water Law Principles". Please fix either your objectives or your main findings.
Conclusions: Which Islamic states (riparian) are you referring to here? Please clarify.
L 527 - 536: Please understand that IWLPs are relatively the latest than the IWMPs, therefore, this comparison is wrong. You need to reverse your thinking.
