ISLAMIC LAW IN THE NEWS
- In the wake of the current war, in a recent statement, the vice president of a Russian-owned bank argued that Russian interest in Islamic finance has risen.
- Top officials from Pakistan recently reiterated the country’s commitment to interest-free banking by 2027.
- An Australian tourist who visited Aceh (Indonesia), recently “accused of an alcohol-fuelled, naked rampage outside a beachside resort,” avoided lashing by paying a criminal fine.
- “The National Human Rights Committee (NHRC) [in Qatar] organised […] an interactive educational programme for imams and preachers of mosques on ‘[t]he values of tolerance between Islamic law and international human rights law.'”
- “Saudi Arabia has removed anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli references from Islamic studies schoolbooks, according to an Israeli textbook watchdog.”
- “The Saudi Center for Commercial Arbitration (SCCA) recently issued a new and updated set of arbitration rules (SCCA Rules 2023).” “The previous rules provided that the parties’ agreed governing law would be applied by the tribunal “without prejudice to the rules of Sharia” or Islamic jurisprudence. Such a clause is omitted from the SCCA Rules 2023[.]”
- Turkey‘s incumbent President Erdogan won a third term as president – a victory partly enabled as “[h]e reminded his audience that he had delivered on conservative causes, lifting head scarf bans and turning the Hagia Sofia, one of Turkey’s architectural treasures, from a museum into a mosque.” For more content and context on the Turkish decision on Hagia Sophia that restored its status as a mosque, consult our “Recent Case Roundup: On the Turkish Decision on Hagia Sophia.“
CASES AND FATWĀS
- “The sultan of Johor [Malaysia] sa[id] he still holds to a fatwa declaring the word ‘Allah’ exclusive to Muslims, cautioning Putrajaya to tread carefully following its move to drop an appeal against a High Court decision allowing Christians to use the Arabic term.”
- Over 130 Muslim religious leaders issued a statement asserting that “sexual relations are permitted within the bounds of marriage, and marriage can only occur between a man and a woman.”
UPCOMING EVENTS AND OPPORTUNITIES
PIL & Harvard Calendar:
- Student work opportunity: Research assistant, Widener Library, Harvard University.
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.
- Position opening: Academic mentor and field researcher in Iraq, Cordoba Peace Institute-Geneva (CPI) & ETH Zurich, rolling basis.
- Position opening: Academic mentor for researcher in Mogadishu, Cordoba Peace Institute-Geneva (CPI) & ETH Zurich.
- Conference: “Colonial Legacies and Racial Formations: France In Comparative Perspective,” POMEPS, June 8-9, 2023.
- Summer Program: Comparative Law, AALS, May 15-June 16, 2023.
- Call for Panel and Paper Proposals 2023: The American Society of Comparative Law, June 15, 2023.
- Summer School: Philology and Manuscripts from the Muslim World, Leiden University, June 16, 2023.
- MESA Malcolm H. Kerr Dissertation Awards, July 1, 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.
- MESA Undergraduate Education Award, August 1, 2023.
- MESA Graduate Student Paper Prize, August 15, 2023.
- 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.