Weekend Scholarship Roundup

  • In “Apostasy and Freedom of Religion in Malaysia,” Islamic Law & Law of the Muslim World eJournal, Joshua Neoh argues that the constitutional space for the freedom of religion in Malaysia is best carved out by drawing on constitutional law, international law and the common law.
  • Heidi Gilchrist explores laws that criminalize dress in Europe – burqa bans that can even carry jail time for women who cover their face in public in “‘Act Normal or Leave’: When Law and Culture Collide,” Islamic Law & Law of the Muslim World eJournal.
  • In Constitutional Foundings in Southeast AsiaHart Publishing, editors Kevin YL Tan and Ngoc Son Bui curate a series of historical essays that focus on the making, nature, and role of the first modern constitutions at the founding of the modern nation-states in Southeast Asia. Islamic law is particularly expanded upon in Koichi Kawamura‘s chapter 3. The Origins of the 1945 Indonesian Constitution and BA Hussainmiya‘s chapter 8. The Making of Brunei’s 1959 Constitution. 
  • Arzoo Osanloo examines how an Islamic victim-centered approach to justice sheds light on the conditions of mercy in the Iranian justice system in Forgiveness Work: Mercy, Law, and Victims’ Rights in Iran.
  • In Secularizing Islam: The Colonial Encounter and the Making of a British Islamic Criminal Law in Northern Nigeria, 1903–58, Rabiat Akande narrates the making of a British Colonial Islamic law in Northern Nigeria through the unprecedented expansion of siyasa. Departing from orthodox accounts of Islamic law’s reification in colonial Northern Nigeria and heterodox assertions of its erosion by the colonial state, the author argues that neither the reification nor the erosion accounts illuminates the relationship between the colonial state and Islamic law.

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