Each year, the Islamic Law and Society Collaborative Research Network (ILS-CRN) helps compose panels on Islamic law at the Annual Meeting of the Law and Society Association. This year’s roster features a host of author-meets-reader book sessions and panels featuring Islamic law. Tamir Moustafa of Simon Fraser University will respond to commentators’ reviews of his recent book, Constituting Religion: Islam, Liberal Rights, and the Malaysian State (CUP 2018). Havva Guney-Rubenacker of Harvard Law School will present a paper on “Human Dignity and the Problem of a Universal Abolition of Slavery in Islamic Law” and Rabea Benhalim of the University of Wisconsin Law School will present a paper on “The Case for American Muslim Arbitration” – both on the panel devoted to querying Islamic Law and Society in Contemporary and Hybrid Legal Contexts. Enibokun Uzebu of the University of Benin and Mutaz M. Qafisheh of the Hebron University College of Law and Political Science will both present papers on the panel on Gender and Judging in Muslim Courts. These are just a few highlights from over a dozen presentations on Islamic law. For those interested in getting involved in the ILS-CRN to help organize for next year, or in getting to speak more informally, there will be a business meeting for the ILS-CRN from 6.45 – 8.00pm on Friday 5/31, followed by a dinner (RSVP required – to ncastro@law.harvard.edu).
Islamic Law and Society Collaborative Research Network (ILS-CRN)
Co-Chairs: Tamir Moustafa, Simon Fraser University & Intisar Rabb, Harvard Law School
Business Meeting (followed by dinner)
Islamic Law and Society CRN
Business Meeting: Friday 5/31 from 6:45 PM – 8:00 PM
Author Meets Reader (AMR) Sessions:
Gender, Alterity and Human Rights – Freedom in a Fishbowl: Thursday 5/30 from 11:50 AM – 12:35 PM
Author: Ratna Kapur, Queen Mary University of London
Constituting Religion: Islam, Liberal Rights, and the Malaysian State: Friday 5/31 from 11:50 AM – 12:35 PM
Author: Tamir Moustafa, Simon Fraser University
Paper Sessions:
Islamic Law and Society in Contemporary and Hybrid Legal Contexts: Thursday 5/30 from 10:00 AM – 11:45 AM
• Men’s Speech Gone Awry: Husbands, Jurists, and Fatwas on Divorce in Iraqi Kurdistan (J. Andrew Bush, New York University Abu Dhabi)
• Violence Against Women in the Name of Honor: The Case of Jordan (Ghufran Alqahtani, Washington College of Law-American University)
• Human Dignity and the Problem of a Universal Abolition of Slavery in Islamic Law (Havva Guney-Rubenacker, Harvard Law School)
• Foreign Beliefs: Political Discourse and the Role of Law in the Exclusion of Religious Minorities in England (Catherine Warrick, Villanova University)
• The Case for American Muslim Arbitration (Rabea Benhalim, University of Wisconsin Law School)
Dignity on Their Own Terms: Mobilizing European Law Against Racialization and Exclusion – The Case of Xenophobia, Islamophobia and Romaphobia: Friday 5/31 from 10:00 AM – 11:45 AM
• Litigating Against Islamophobia in Europe: a 3D Puzzle (Raphaële Xenidis, European University Institute, Law Department)
• Lost in Translation? Migrants’ Quest for Dignity in the UK (Virginia Passalacqua, European University Institute)
• Competing Conceptions of dignity in Roma Rights Activism (Lilla Farkas, European University Institute)
• From Race to Human Dignity? The Evolution Anti-Deportation Campaigns’ Political Claims in the UK from the 1970s to the present day (Diletta Lauro, University of Oxford, Lincoln College)
Gender and Judging in Muslim Courts: Saturday 6/1 from 4:45 PM – 6:30 PM
• Gender and the Judiciary in Africa: A Perspective from Nigeria (Enibokun Uzebu, University of Benin)
• Women and Divorce for Sexual Dissatisfaction within Indonesian Religious Courts (Ayang Utriza Yakin, Catholic University of Louvain)
• Adjudicating Islamic Family Law in Egypt: Continuity and Rupture (Monika Lindbekk, University of Oslo)
• Is Palestine Ready for a New Gender-Balanced Family Law? (Mutaz M. Qafisheh, Hebron University College of Law and Political Science)
Courts, Bureaucracy and Politics in Eastern Europe, Eurasia, and Turkey: Sunday 6/2 from 10:00 AM – 11:45 AM
• Transformation of the Judiciary in Turkey: The Role of Islamic Groups and Informal Networks (Abdullah Erdem Demirtaş, Bogazici University)
• Guarding democracy depends on its understanding: Constitutional courts in Hungary and Slovakia and (anti-)democratic political change (Max Steuer, Comenius University in Bratislava)
• Who judges the judges? (Stefanie Lemke, Oxford University / Council of Europe (Programme Office Turkey) / European Commission)
• Politics and Bureaucracy: Civil Service Reform in Poland in New Institutional Perspective (Kaja Gadowska, Jagiellonian University)