Islamic Law in the News Roundup

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ISLAMIC LAW IN THE NEWS

  • Kenya sanctioned a man who disguised himself in a burqa to compete in a national chess competition for women.
  • The cleric who performed former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan’s marriage declared the marriage to be against Islamic law, alleging that Khan’s wife did not wait out the 130-day period (iddat) after divorcing her former spouse.
  • “The government of Alberta [announced that it] is looking to expand access to financing that adheres to Islamic law, with a view to enabling halal mortgages.”
  • Two Afghan religious scholars have criticized the Taliban‘s ban on women’s right to education.
  • “The Taliban […] said their decision to forbid local women from working for the United Nations in Afghanistan is an internal matter that all parties should respect.” 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.”
  • “The world’s largest organization of Muslims [Nahdlatul Ulama of Indonesia] [has been] campaigning for thorough worldwide reform of how to understand the faith’s religious law (Sharia) and applied jurisprudence (Fiqh).”

CASES AND FATWĀS

  • “Ayatollah Sayyed Sadiq al-Husseini al-Shirazi [of Iran] issued a fatwa forbidding governments to use violence against demonstrators demanding their legitimate rights.”
  • “The United Nations expressed concern on Tuesday about a request for a fatwa seeking the assassination of its head in Sudan, as loyalists of ousted leader Omar al-Bashir stepped up opposition to a draft deal for a new civilian government.” 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.”
  • “The Eid and Friday prayers will be performed separately [if the Eid prayer falls on a Friday], according to a statement issued by the Fatwa Council of the United Arab Emirates.“
  • “An Upper Area Court in Gwagwalada, Abuja [Nigeria], has dissolved a 15-year-old marriage between a public servant, Okpanachi Yahaya and his estranged wife, Zainab Adejoh over infidelity,” in a case that applied Islamic law.
  • “The Supreme Judiciary Council (SJC) [of Qatar] stressed that law No. 4 for 2023 on the procedures for dividing inheritances issued by HH the Amir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani on Wednesday aims to facilitate the litigation procedures for heirs, speed up the division of inheritances, and avoid the legal, social, and economic issues arising from delaying its distribution to heirs.”
  • Last week, Islamic Law in the News Roundup mistakenly reported on a news story purporting to reference a “fatwā” by Iran’s Supreme Leader concerning artificial intelligence. The story was a product of satire published on April 1. We apologize for the oversight and have removed it from the roundup; and, in the spirit of April Fool’s, this note is to underscore that there is no such fatwā against AI (yet!).

UPCOMING EVENTS AND OPPORTUNITIES

PIL & Harvard Calendar:

  • Disaster Relief: Harvard Law School’s Turkey-Syria Earthquake Relief Efforts.
  • Student work opportunity: Research assistant, Widener Library, Harvard University.
  • 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.
  • Global Academy Award, 2023-2024: The MESA Global Academy, May 1, 2023.
  • Graduate Workshop On Ecstatic Sufi Literature, University of Chicago, May 4, 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: Land and Family in Africa: using and avoiding public institutions for a political sociology of law, May 10, 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.

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