- In “From conquest to co-existence: Burhān al-Dīn al-Marghīnānī’s (d. 593/1197) re-interpretation of jihād” (Journal of Islamic Studies, vol. 32 no. 2), Youcef L. Soufi (University of Toronto) takes issue with the mainstream view in scholarship that second/eight century Muslim jurists’ conception of jihād was uniformly in support of continuous imperial conquest.
- In “Islam from the Inside Out: ‘Ayn al-Quḍāt Hamadānī’s Reconception of Islam as Vector” (Journal of Islamic Studies, vol. 32 no. 2), Nicholas Boylston (Harvard University) discusses sixth/twelfth century sūfī figure Hamādānī’s definition of Islam as “whatever [that] takes a man to God.”
- In “The Dissemination and Implementation of Islam within the African American Community” (The American Journal of Islam and Society, vol. 38, no. 1-2), Rafiqur Rahman (Catholic University of America) discusses what it means to be an African American Muslim in the United States, with an emphasis on how “highly contested, problematic, and racialized” the definition has become.