Islamic Law in the News Roundup

ISLAMIC LAW IN THE NEWS

  • Emilia Justyna Powell, a Notre Dame professor of political science and concurrent professor at The Law School, has won two International Studies Association (ISA) awards for her 2020 book, Islamic Law and International Law: Peaceful Resolution of Disputes.”
  • “The Supreme Court [of India …] continued hearing the batch of petitions challenging the Karnataka High Court‘s judgment which upheld the ban on wearing hijab by Muslim girl students in some schools and colleges in the State,” with one lawyer arguing that the High Court misquoted from the Qur’ān. For more information and context on the recent hijāb ban controversy in Karnataka (India), consult our Research Editor Raha Rafii’s “Snapshot: Karnataka High Court Ruling on Banning Ḥijāb” and the posts listed there.
  • Turkey‘s Presidency of Religious Affairsfatwā hotline and website “answered some 836,000 questions so far this year.”
  • Shaykh Mohammed Faqih of the Memphis Islamic Center, commenting on Tennessee‘s strict abortion laws, stated: “If a person is seeking an abortion, it’s always a tough decision to be made . . . Politically speaking, it’s very awkward for us and we don’t want political officials to make the choice for everyone.” For more content and context on debates around the right to abortion and how Islamic has featured in these debates, consult our Resource Roundup: Abortion and Islamic Law
  • “A young Iranian woman has died after falling into a coma following her detention by morality police enforcing Iran’s strict hijab rules[.]”
  • Pundits have observed that “[i]nfluential Shia preacher and politician Muqtada al-Sadr has once again proven that he can turn his followers off and on like a light switch,” at a time when Iraqi politics are proving divisive over sectarian lines.
  • “A man who dedicated an Umrah pilgrimage to the late Queen Elizabeth II from the Grand Mosque of Mecca was arrested by Saudi police on Monday.”
  • “Scholars, students, and campus leaders are rethinking how young Muslims should navigate the world of intimacy[,]” as college chaplains in the United States have expressed concern over an increase in “secret marriages” by Muslim students.
  • “A Grade I Area Court in Kubwa, Abuja on Monday dissolved a six-year-old marriage between a businessman, Bashiru Ibrahim and his estranged wife, Eleojo Musa over irreconcilable differences.”
  • “A man, Ayuba Sule, has dragged his estranged wife, Awawu Haruna, to a Kwara State family court sitting in Ilorin over alleged illegal marriage with another man, Jemilu Bahause who is now her new husband.Also charged to court in the suit is the wife’s father, Haruna Danjuma, who reportedly married her daughter out to the new suitor without the knowledge of Sule, the first husband and without dissolution of the previous marriage.”

ON COVID-19 AND ISLAMIC LAW

  • In an interview with the Houston Chronicle, infectious disease expert Dr. Peter Hotez, commenting on efforts by Indonesia to develop a COVID-19 vaccine, stated: “Our Corbevax vaccine has gone into 80 million people, 70 million adolescents. The second version of our vaccine is going to be in Indonesia. Indovac is about to be approved. It’s the first halal vaccine for Muslim majority countries. I’m excited about that.”

UPCOMING EVENTS & OPPORTUNITIES

PIL & Harvard Calendar:

  • Position opening: Tenure-Track Harvard Professor in the History of Modern Africa, Harvard University, September 19, 2022.
  • SHARIAsource Lab Workshop :: Ibn ʿAsākir and His History of Damascus: Named Entity Recognition and Text Reuse, Sarah Savant. Register by September 23, 2022.
  • Student work opportunity: Research assistant, Widener Library, Harvard University.
  • Call for Papers: The 22nd Vagantes Conference on Medieval Studies, Harvard University, November 28, 2022.

Global Calendar:

  • Panel: Religion after Roe, John Carroll University, September 19, 2022.
  • Conference: “The Theory and Practice of Rebellion in the Early Islamicate World,” Hamburg University, September 22-24, 2022.
  • Position opening: Assistant Professor in Islamic Studies, Stanford University, September 30, 2022.
  • Call for Papers: The 233rd Meeting of the American Oriental Society 2023, October 15, 2022.
  • Conference: Materiality, Rituals and the Senses in Shi‘i Islam, Georgia, October 19-21, 2022.
  • Call for Papers: The Yearbook of Islamic and Middle Eastern Law’s Forthcoming Volume 22 (2022), October 21, 2022.
  • Conference: American Society for Legal History 2022, November 10-12, 2022.
  • 2022 ASLH Conference: The Johnson Program for First Book Authors (American Bar Foundation), November 10, 2022 @ 9:00 am – 5:00 pm.
  • 2022 ASLH Conference: Shifting Criminal Legal Landscapes in 19th-Century Habsburg and Ottoman Borderlands (Missouri), November 11, 2022 @ 1:15 pm – 2:40 pm.
  • 2022 ASLH Conference: Many Peoples, Many Laws: Legal Pluralism Across the Medieval World (Ontario), November 12, 2022 @ 2:05 pm – 3:35 pm.
  • 2022 ASLH Conference: Islamic Law and Agriculture in Global History, 1850-1950 (Superior A), November 12, 2022 @ 10:15 am – 11:45 am.
  • Call for Papers: Regulative Verses of the Qur’ān (āyāt al-aḥkām), Al Mahdi Institute, November 25, 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.
  • Position opening: Associate Director, Center for Religious and Spiritual Life and Muslim Chaplain, Macalester College (priority given to applications by August 1, 2022).
  • Position opening: Adjunct lecturer, Babson College.
  • 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.
  • MEM Fellowship for Graduate Students of Color.

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