Islamic Law in the News Roundup

ISLAMIC LAW IN THE NEWS

• Jalal al-Qassab, Redha Rajab and Mohammed Rajab, three members of the progressive Bahraini think tank Al-Tajdeed, were sentenced to a year in jail and a fine for “ridiculing” Islam. The sentence is suspended, pending an appeal. For more content and context on harsh interpretations and applications of Islamic criminal law, consult our Editor-in-Chief, Professor Intisar Rabb’s “Resource Roundup: Islamic Criminal Law.” For more news blurbs relating to harsh applications of Islamic criminal law, consult our “Islamic Criminal Law in the News Roundup.”
• “In a radical break with Islamic orthodoxy, Indonesia’s Nahdlatul Ulama, or Revival of Islamic Scholars” has called for “abolishing the concept of a caliphate in Islamic law.”
• Women in Kerala, India protested and demanded reforms to the Islamic inheritance law applicable to them.
• Observers have reported that Iranian authorities, in an attempt to induce compliance with the country’s mandatory ḥijāb laws, are contemplating new ways to sanction women who do not comply with the law such as “denying unveiled women service at airports and restaurants, educational services, blocking phone lines and using surveillance cameras.”
• It is reported that around 4,300 women from India will travel to Mecca to perform the Islamic pilgrimage, without being accompanied by a male relative, which some observers have described as “a shift in attitudes toward women’s participation in religious events.”
• The Islamic Fatwā Council in Iraq, “a non-government body of [Shī’ī and Sunnī] clerics headquartered in the Iraqi spiritual capital of Najaf,” issued a fatwā against Hamas, accusing it of being “un-Islamic.”

UPCOMING EVENTS & OPPORTUNITIES

PIL & Harvard Calendar:

• Disaster Relief: Harvard Law School’s Turkey-Syria Earthquake Relief Efforts.
• Student work opportunity: Research assistant, Widener Library, Harvard University.
• Talk: “Understanding Mehir through the Ottoman Realm” by Sema Keles Yildiz, Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Harvard University, April 18, 2023.
• Info Session: International Law Journal Student Note Competition, April 20, 2023.
• Islam in Africa Initiative: Zekeria Salem, Swartz Hall, Garvin Room, Harvard University, April 21, 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.
• Call for Entries for ILJ Student Note Competition, May 21, 2023.

Global Calendar:

• Call to Sponsor a Member: for applicants affected by the earthquakes, MESA 2023.
• Internship opportunity: The Executive Office of the President, White House, various deadlines.
• Call for Abstracts: 9th IDHN Conference, April 19, 2023.
• Fellowship: Evans Fund, Cambridge University, 2023, April 26, 2023.
• Call for Abstracts: Notre Dame Law School’s Religious Liberty Initiative’s Conference, April 28, 2023.
• Conference: Policing Issues in the 21st Century, AALS, April 28, 2023.
• Global Academy Award, 2023-2024: The MESA Global Academy, May 1, 2023.
• Conference: Seventh Conference for Junior Researchers, The Law and Society Association at Stanford Law School (LSAS), May 5, 2023.
• Position opening: Executive Director, American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania, May 5, 2023.
• Postdoctoral research associate: The Center for Digital Humanities (CDH) and the NEH-funded initiative for Manuscript, Rare Book and Archive Studies (MARBAS) at Princeton University, August 2023, May 7, 2023.
• Call for Papers: Cambridge International Law Journal Volume 12(2), May 12, 2023.
• Roundtable Discussion: The future of teaching in the Islamicate Digital Humanities, AKU-ISMC, London, May 15-16, 2023.
• Summer Program: Comparative Law, AALS, May 15-June 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.
• Call for Articles: Bogazici Law Review (Turkey), May 31, 2023.
• Call for Applications: ASLH Student Research Colloquium, 2023, June 1, 2023.
• Annual meeting: Law & Society Association’s Annual Meeting, San Juan, Puerto Rico, June 1-4, 2023.
• Call for Panel and Paper Proposals 2023: The American Society of Comparative Law, June 15, 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.
• Wallace Johnson First Book Program, July 14, 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.