ISLAMIC LAW IN THE NEWS
- The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints recently published an informational pamphlet stressing “shared practices and beliefs” their faith community shares with Muslims, to which Luna Banuri, executive director of Utah Muslim Civic League, responded: “They did a very good job in presenting a holistic view of Islam that any reader can relate to and understand.”
- In response to the recent heart transplant from a pig to a human, conducted by a Muslim-American physician, Muslim jurists expressed mixed reactions, with many arguing that the principle of necessity justifies the practice, while also noting that research into alternatives should continue.
- The Islamic Art Department of the Louvre Museum has curated many exhibitions displaying Islamic art and artifacts from Islamic civilization, many argue in an attempt to counter rising Islamophobia in France.
- Ed Husain, a British author and academic, recently stated that British Islam stood at a crossroads and that it should draw more from Islam’s “legacy of tolerance, respect for learning, and cultivation of the arts.”
- In a recent opinion piece, titled “Work ethics & Islam,” Nikhat Sattar questioned why non-Muslims in Europe, in her opinion, have adopted what she calls an Islamic work ethic, and what Muslims can learn from their European counterparts.
- The possibility that the U.S. Supreme Court may overrule Roe v. Wade, the seminal decision that established a woman’s constitutional right to abortion, has caused anxiety not only among Americans in general, but also among American-Muslim communities, the majority of whose faiths do not recognize a blanket ban on a woman’s right to abortion.
- After the Indonesian Ulama Council ruled in a fatwā they issued that cryptocurrencies were against Islamic law due to their risky nature and capacity to cause harm, Indonesian lawyers have started to question the status of such fatwās and whether they constitute binding, positive law.
ON COVID-19 AND ISLAMIC LAW
- The Taliban‘s acting health minister urged Afghans to get vaccinated, arguing that “protecting oneself is one of the obligations of the Islam[ic] religion.”
UPCOMING EVENTS & OPPORTUNITIES
PIL & Harvard Calendar:
- Webinar: “Inheritance versus Personal Status: Shifting National Strategies in Syria, Egypt, and Tunisia,” by Dr. Hedayat Heikal, February 8, 2022.
Global Calendar:
- Interdisciplinary Debates: The Mosques of Colonial South Asia by Sana Haroon, Dartmouth College, February 8, 2022.
- Call for Volunteer Chairs & Discussants: 2022 Global Meeting on Law and Society. Deadline: February 18, 2022.
- Research Associate: The Evolution of Islamic Societies (c.600-1600 CE): Algorithmic Analysis into Social History. Deadline: March 31, 2022.
- Persian Language Summer School by Aspirantum, Yerevan (Armenia), July 3, 2022 – August 27, 2022. Deadline: April 21, 2022.
- Call for Applications: 2022 Temple Bar Scholarship. Deadline: April 30, 2022.
- Postdoctoral position opening: Christian-Muslim communication, University of Konstanz. Deadline: April 2022.
- Workshop: Intertextuality in Islamic and Jewish Law, June 21-23, 2022, University of Muenster.
- Conference: American Society for Legal History 2022, November 10-12, 2022.
- Position opening: Assistant Professor of Modern Middle Eastern History, University of Tennessee, Fall 2022. Deadline: until an appointment is made.
- Position opening: Columbia University, The Department of Art History and Archaeology Barbara Stoler Miller Assistant Professor, Indian and South Asian Art History. Deadline: until an appointment is made.
- Call for Applications: Interdisciplinary Scholars of Places, Movement and Cultural Practices Professor, New York University Abu Dhabi. Deadline: until the position is filled.
- Research Project: Historian/Researcher – Tudor Period/Elizabethan Era, and the Ottoman Empire during the Suleiman the Magnificent Period. Deadline: until the position is filled.
- Call for Submissions: The UCLA School of Law’s Journal of Islamic and Near Eastern Law (JINEL).
- Call for Manuscripts: Advances in the Study of Islam, Edinburgh University Press.