Weekend Scholarship Roundup

SCHOLARSHIP ROUNDUP

On Islamic Law

• In “Dissecting the Asia Bibi Case: A Critical Analysis of Blasphemy Law in Pakistan” (Manchester Journal of Transnational Islamic Law & Practice 18, no. 1 (2022)), Muhammad Sadiq Kakar (Vrije Universiteit Brussel) “critically analyses the case of Asia Bibi, a Christian woman who was accused of blasphemy and given a death sentence by the Additional Sessions Judge of Nankana Sahib, Punjab in 2010 under Section 295-C of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC). ” For more content and context on the case of Asia Bibi, consult the Islamic Law Blog’s “Roundtable on Pakistan’s Landmark Blasphemy Case: Asia Bibi v. The State (2018),” and the contributions there.
• In “Branded Bodies: Judicial Torture, Punishment, and Infamy in Nineteenth-Century Iran” (in Comparative Studies in Society and History, 2023), Farzin Vejdani (Toronto Metropolitan University) “discusses branding as a marker of ownership, both of human slaves and of animals; Islamic attitudes toward bodily inscription and its symbolic significance in the afterlife; and associations between branding and human or divine love in Persian poetry.”
• In “Settler Colonial Regulation of Bigamous Marriage Across the Israeli/Palestinian Border” (Territory, Politics, Governance (2022)), Rawia Aburabia (Sapir Academic College School of Law) “examines how settler colonial states selectively enforce the law to pursue the goals of land acquisition and demographic control, focusing on Israel’s response to cross-border polygamy as practiced by Bedouins in Israel.”
• In Islamic Legal Principles and Intellectual Property Rights in the Gulf States (Gerlach Press, 2023), Nadia Naim (Aston Law School) “focuses on the relationship between Islamic law and intellectual property law and proposes groundbreaking alternatives to better support the growth of intellectual property in line with the Islamic moral economy.”
• In “Indonesia’s New Criminal Code and Article 411: A Step Backwards for Individual Liberties” (Jurist, January 30, 2023), Akarshi Narain and Apoorv Vats (NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad, India), commenting on Indonesia’s new criminal code, write: “Although the provision criminalizing consensual premarital sex applies to all individuals in Indonesia, certain communities are likely to face greater challenges and disadvantages from its implementation. Article 411 of the new code carries the risk of moral policing and selective enforcement, which could be engineered to target marginalized communities such as LGBTQ+ people, religious minorities, and women.”
• In “The Taliban and Islamic Constitutionalism in Afghanistan: Reviving an Old Episode?” (ICONnect, December 23, 2022), Shamsad Pasarlay (University of Chicago School of Law) writes: “most of Afghanistan’s past constitutions defined the shariʿa as one of principles that should constrain government and legislation. However, the Taliban’s constitutional project thus far appears to define the shariʿa as a principle to which the constitution itself must conform, and in this function, the shariʿa seems to have vested a significant degree of unchecked power in the “state.” And it is challenges like these that would inevitably confront any project of theorizing Islamic constitutionalism.”
• In “Dharma Files | Analysing Brexit in context of Islamic jurisprudence and Western democratic tradition” (Firstpost, February 5, 2023), Arvind Sharma (McGill University) observes that “Islamic jurisprudence conceptualised the possibility of a difference arising between the Ijma of the community and its representatives, and reflected on the prospect of a divergence between the two[,]” likening the situation to the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the European Union.

On Islam and Data Science

• In “Exploring the development of Islamic fintech ecosystem in Indonesia: a text analytics” (Qualitative Research in Financial Markets, January 12, 2023), Fahmi Ali Hudaefi ( Institut Agama Islam Darussalam (IAID) Ciamis, Indonesia), M. Kabir Hassan (University of New Orleans), and Muhamad Abduh (Universiti Brunei Darussalam, Brunei Darussalam) identify the core elements of the Islamic fintech ecosystem: “financial customers, fintech startups, government, technology developers, traditional financial institutions and fatwa (Islamic legal opinion).”

FIELD GUIDE TO ISLAMIC LAW ONLINE: RECENT SOURCES

The Field Guide to Islamic Law Online is an ever-growing collection of links to hundreds of links to primary sources and archival collections around the world, online.We recently added new resources to this list:

• Islamic Law Research, “prepared for Prof. Clark Lombardi’s E560, Contemporary Muslim Legal Systems Seminar and B556, Islamic Law” at the University of Washington School of Law, compiles various links to books and articles relating to Islamic law.
• Islamic Legal Systems, a webpage maintained by the Queen’s University Library, provides a brief list of books relating to Islamic law.

UPCOMING EVENTS AND OPPORTUNITIES

PIL & Harvard Calendar:

• Student work opportunity: Research assistant, Widener Library, Harvard University.
• Talk: “Early Modern Money Between England and the Ottoman Empire” by Ellen M. Nye, Charles Warren Center, Harvard Law School, February 23, 2023.
• Call for Applications: The Inaugural Harvard-Zaytuna Thesis Symposium, Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Islamic Studies Program, Harvard University, March 3-5, 2023.
• SHARIAsource Lab :: Hackathon: Arabic OCR Community Scribes, March 4, 2023.
• Islamic Law Speaker Series :: Haroun Rahimi (The American University of Afghanistan), “Taliban and Modernity,” Harvard Law School, March 14, 2023.
• Position opening: Program in Islamic Law: Data Science Fellowships, 2023-2024, March 31, 2023.
• Islamic Law Speaker Series :: Elizabeth Lhost (University of Wisconsin–Madison), Everyday Islamic Law and the Making of Modern South Asia, Harvard Law School, April 4, 2023.
• Seminar: “The Rule of Recognition and the Consolidation of the Maliki Madhhab in the 14th Century” by Mohammad Fadel, Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Islamic Studies Program, Harvard University, April 6, 2023.
• Prize: Alwaleed Bin Talal Undergraduate Thesis Prize, Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Islamic Studies Program, Harvard University, April 14, 2023.
• Workshop: Arabic Manuscript Workshop, Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Islamic Studies Program, Harvard University, April 24-28, 2023.
• Islamic Law Speaker Series :: Dilyara Agisheva (Harvard Law School), “The Entangled Legal Formations and the Russian annexation of Crimea in the 18th century,” Harvard Law School, May 2, 2023.
• Prize: Alwaleed Bin Talal Graduate Thesis Prize, Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Islamic Studies Program, Harvard University, May 19, 2023.

Global Calendar:

• Workshop: Digital Medieval Studies Institute, NYU DC, February 22, 2023.
• Call for Papers: MESA Annual Meeting 2023, Montréal, Québec, Canada, February 23, 2023.
• Conference: The Maghrib in Massachusetts, UMass Boston, February 25, 2023.
• Call for Papers: Secularism as a Value, Princeton, New Jersey, March 1, 2023.
• Call for Papers: Fall 2023 Works-in-Progress Workshop on Comparative Constitutional Law in the Global South, Columbia Law School, March 1, 2023.
• Call for Panels: Association for the Study of the Worldwide African Diaspora (ASWAD) 11th Biennial Conference, University of Ghana-Legon, March 15, 2023.
• Ottoman Summer School, Istanbul, Bilgi University, March 15, 2023.
• Call for Papers: Interdisciplinary Conference on Islamic Law in the Crucible of the Modern State: Problems and Perspectives, University of Muenster, Germany, March 20, 2023.
• Webinar: “Public Freedoms in the Islamic State,” with Rached Ghannouchi, Noah Feldman and Rushain Abbasi, Yale Law School, March 21, 2023.
• Conference: Policing Issues in the 21st Century, AALS, April 28, 2023.
• Conference: Seventh Conference for Junior Researchers, The Law and Society Association at Stanford Law School (LSAS), May 5, 2023.
• Roundtable Discussion: The future of teaching in the Islamicate Digital Humanities, AKU-ISMC, London, May 15-16, 2023.
• 2023 Law and Humanities Interdisciplinary Workshop: 22nd meeting of the Law and Humanities Interdisciplinary Workshop, Georgetown Law Center, Washington, DC, May 24-25, 2023.
• Call for Papers: Munich Summer Institute 2023 & Ph.D. Workshop, May 24-26, 2023.
• The Graduate Student & Early Career Workshop: Law and Society Association, May 31, 2023.
• Annual meeting: Law & Society Association’s Annual Meeting, San Juan, Puerto Rico, June 1-4, 2023.
• Summer Course: Thinking with Islamicate Manuscripts: Critical Approaches to Historical Methodology, History of Collections, and Digital Tools In Islamic Studies, July 3-7, 2023, Central European University (application deadline: February 14, 2023).
• Conference: Interdisciplinary Conference on Islamic Law in the Crucible of the Modern State: Problems and Perspectives, University of Muenster, Germany, July 10-12, 2023.
• 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).
• Workshop: TraSIS (Trajectories of Slavery in Islamicate Societies) and the BCDSS (Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies) Murtensee, August 30, 2023 – September 1, 2023.
• Call for Papers: Special Issue of Religions: “A Critique of the Modern Discourse of Maqāṣid,” September 15, 2023.
• Fall 2023 Works-in-Progress Workshop: Comparative Constitutional Law in the Global South, Columbia Law School, October 20-21, 2023.
• Position opening: Adjunct Lecturer in Modern Middle East, 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.
• Scholarship: Islamic Scholarship Fund CAMBA Law Scholarship 2023.