ISLAMIC LAW IN THE NEWS
- In her opinion piece in Rewire News Group, Aliza Kazmi, commenting on the recently leaked Supreme Court opinion that would overrule Roe v. Wade, wrote: “Islam supports an individual’s bodily autonomy, and we need to advocate for our community’s right to an abortion.”
- Lawyers for the Malian Islamist rebel Al Hassan, who is charged with various war crimes, stated that their client should not be convicted by the International Criminal Court.
- At two local IHOPs, a diner chain in the United States, “Ramadan halal specials were so popular they’re staying on the menu.”
- The Taliban in Afghanistan recently decreed that women and girls must cover up in public from head to toe.
- The United Nations Security Council agreed to convene to discuss the situation of women and girls in Afghanistan, after the Taliban announced that women should cover their entire bodies in public spaces.
- A recently published documentary, Afghanistan: No Country for Women, documented how Afghan women are imprisoned by the Taliban for “unseemly and immoral behavior” according to its interpretation of Islamic law. For more content and context on the recent developments in Afghanistan, consult our Editor-in-Chief, Professor Intisar Rabb’s “Resource Roundup: Afghanistan, the Taliban, and Islamic Law.“
- In response to the mob killing of a girl in Nigeria on grounds of blasphemy, the Muslim Media Practitioners of Nigeria (MMPN) condemned the killing, describing it as “anti-Islam, barbaric, and sad.”
- In Kano, Nigeria, a court convicted an atheist “for making social media posts it found to be blasphemous against Islam” and sentenced the defendant to 24 years in prison.
- If enacted, South Africa‘s Muslim Marriages Bill would recognize Islamic marriages throughout the country.
- Islamic finance experts have warned investors in sharī’a-compliant finance of the risks associated with “green investing.”
- Natalie and Kim Church, owners of The Crafted Cake House in Morley (UK), were recognized as being “among the first non-Muslim cake designers in the UK to have introduced” the option of “halal wedding cakes.”
ON COVID-19 AND ISLAMIC LAW
- Commenting on the decreased number of legal assistance requests, an director from the Massachusetts chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations stated: “I think that COVID is a reason we’ve gotten fewer requests, not because all of a sudden there’s no Islamophobia going on in the commonwealth.”
UPCOMING EVENTS & OPPORTUNITIES
Global Calendar:
- Workshop: Islamic Perspectives on a Posthuman Future, University of Groningen, May 28, 2022.
- Award: Annemarie Schimmel-Foundation for Islamic Studies Research Award. Deadline is May 31, 2022.
- Call for Papers: Gender as a Category of Analysis for the Study of the Medieval Middle East. Deadline is June 1, 2022.
- Legal Internship: ACLU Illinois, Fall 2022. Deadline is June 1, 2022.
- Conference on Kurdish Family Law, Harnack House in Berlin, June 2-4, 2022.
- Workshop: Formation, Establishment, and Evolution of the Mālikī Madhhab, University of Laussane, June 4, 2022.
- Position opening: Director, International Human Rights Program, University of Toronto Faculty of Law. Deadline is June 12, 2022.
- Position opening: Associate Professor in the History of the Middle East and Muslim Africa, University of Bergen, June 12, 2022.
- Summer School 2022: Philology and Manuscripts from the Muslim World. Deadline is June 17, 2022.
- Workshop: Intertextuality in Islamic and Jewish Law, June 21-23, 2022, University of Muenster.
- Conference: The Digital Orientalist’s Virtual Conference 2022, June 25, 2022.
- AMECYS Book Award Announcement (copyright 2020, 2021), June 30, 2022.
- Call for Contributions: Special-Edition Journal, Pakistan, July 15, 2022.
- Call for Papers: The Perspective of the Countryside in the Medieval Arab-Islamic World, August 1, 2022.
- Position opening: Associate Director and Chief Curator, The Oriental Institute, University of Chicago, August 31, 2022.
- Society of Legal Scholars, 113th Annual Conference, King’s College London, September 6-9, 2022.
- Conference: Materiality, Rituals and the Senses in Shi‘i Islam, Georgia, October 19-21, 2022.
- 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.
- Request for Open Submissions: AALS 2023 Annual Meeting, January 4-7, 2023. Submission deadlines vary.