SCHOLARSHIP ROUNDUP
On Islamic Law
- In “Veiling Laws Throughout Iranian History: The Relationship to Religion, Before and During Islamic Law” (SSRN, September 20, 2024), Nicolas Garon (Southern University Law Center) questions “whether Islam is, or is not, the connection to the origin of clothing restrictions for women, and if Zoroastrian Persia still maintained religious dress laws for women, or if it had comparable dress requirements regarding women’s modesty.”
- In “Islamic Wealth Management: Prospects, Challenges, and the Case of Singapore” (Capital Markets Law Journal 19, no. 3 (2024)), Arif A. Jamal (National University of Singapore (NUS) – Faculty of Law) and Habib Motani (Clifford Chance LLP) predict that, “[w]ith the growing wealth in Southeast Asia, including among Muslim communities in the region, and in Singapore particularly, the demand for Islamic wealth management products and services may be expected to rise.”
On Islam and Data Science
- In “Can generative AI master Islamic inheritance law?” (LSE Blog, October 11, 2024), Zubair Abbasi “outlines his comparative study of the accuracy of ChatGPT-4, Co-Pilot, and Gemini, to assess the accuracy of generative AI in interpreting Islamic inheritance law.”
- In “From data to action: Leveraging insights to make more informed collection decisions” (OCLC Blog, July 31, 2024), Sohaib Baig (UCLA) described how he uses “Choreo Insights, an analytics tool developed by OCLC for collection development, shared print, and other management purposes” to answer a simple yet daunting question: “How many books are there on Islamic law?” For more content and context on Dr. Baig’s research, consult his essays written for the Islamic Law Blog.
- The recently launched Muslim Family Law Hub, co-founded by Fatima Essop, a former research affiliate at the Program in Islamic Law (PIL), is an innovative platform designed to offer comprehensive resources on Muslim family laws from around the world.
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 primary sources and archival collections around the world, online. We recently added a new resource to this list:
- Muslim Family Law Hub is a platform that aims to provide material on, and educate users about, how Islamic family law and South African law interact. The project provides accessible summaries of key legal subjects as well as checklists on how to enter into a marriage, initiate a divorce, and plan one’s estate.
UPCOMING EVENTS & OPPORTUNITIES
PIL & Harvard Calendar:
- Book sale: Harvard Middle East Cultural Association, Harvard University, October 23, 2024.
- Memorial Service: In Memoriam: Professor Roy Parviz Mottahedeh, October 25, 2024.
- Conference: Islamic Finance Conference (IFC), Harvard University, October 25-26, 2024.
- Talk: “Faith, Work, and the Law with Jonathan Berry,” Harvard Law School, October 29, 2024.
- Seminar: “Travel Writing and the Production of a Global Imagination in Muslim South Asia” by Daniel Majchrowicz, Harvard University, November 6, 2024.
- Islamic Law Speaker Series: “Islamic Apocalyptic Jurisprudence: End-Times Law in Sunnī and Shīʿī Discourses” by Ali Rod Khadem, Program in Islamic Law, November 12, 2024.
- Islamic Law Speaker Series: “On Theocratic Criminal Law: The Rule of Religion and Punishment in Iran,” Bahman Khodadadi, Program in Islamic Law, December 10, 2024.
- Call for Submissions: Journal of Islamic Law Special Issue, January 13, 2025.
- Islamic Law Speaker Series: “The Making of the Modern Muslim State: Islam and Governance in the Middle East and North Africa (Princeton University Press, 2024),” Malika Zeghal, Program in Islamic Law, February 11, 2025.
- Islamic Law Speaker Series: “The Genealogy of the Death Penalty for Apostasy and Blasphemy in Islam” by Mohsen Kadivar, Program in Islamic Law, March 11, 2025.
- Islamic Law Speaker Series: “A Cultural History of the Arabic Book: Digital Explorations of Writerly Practices and Text Reuse” by Sarah Savant, Program in Islamic Law, April 8, 2025.
Calendar:
- Conference: 2024 American Society of Comparative Law Annual Meeting, Texas A&M University School of Law, October 17-19, 2024 (Call for Submissions: October 15, 2024).
- Conference: The ‘Arabicate’ World: Arabic in the Making of African, Asian, and Mediterranean Literatures, UCLA Center for Near Eastern Studies, October 18, 2024.
- Call for Papers: 9th Annual Meeting of the Memory Studies Association – Beyond Crises: Resilience and (In)stability, October 20, 2024.
- Talk: “Unsettlements: History of Land Reclamation in British Mandate of Palestine” with Nurfadzilah Yahaya, Stanford University, October 28, 2024.
- Talk: “Empire of Refugees: North Caucasian Muslims and the Late Ottoman State” by Vladimir Hamed-Troyansky, UCLA Center for Near Eastern Studies, October 29, 2024.
- Discussion: Comparison and Scalar Reading: Niqula al-Haddad’s Translation of Ignatious Donnelly’s Caesar’s Column, a Tale of the 20th Century, Europe in the Middle East, October 30, 2024.
- EUME Berliner Seminar: “Conflicting Legacies of the 1858 Ottoman Land Law: A View from Palestine” by Munir Fakher Eldin, November 6, 2024.
- Workshop: “Sites of Encounter in the Muslim World: Cairo & Delhi,” UCLA Center for Near Eastern Studies, November 7, 2024.
- Panel: “The Legacies of Anti-colonial Struggle in Algeria: A Panel Honoring the Life and Activism of Elaine Mokhtefi,” UCLA Center for Near Eastern Studies, November 8, 2024.
- Position opening: Associate/Full Professor – Islamic/Middle Eastern Studies, UMass Amherst, November 15, 2024.
- EUME Berliner Seminar: “Law, Litigation, and Politics of Legitimization: On the Possibilities and Limits of Palestinian Legal Action in Israel” by Suhad Bishara, November 20, 2024.
- Book Roundtable: “Order and Disorder in the Ottoman Empire,” UCLA Center for Near Eastern Studies, November 22, 2024.
- Fellowship: Abdallah S. Kamel Center for the Study of Islamic Law and Civilization, 2025-2026, Yale Law School (Deadline: November 30, 2024).
- Conference: Law, colonialism and gender in the Muslim world, December 19-20, 2024.
- EUME Berliner Seminar: “The Politics of Choice: The 2003 Entry Law to Israel, the Phenomenology of Singlehood and Love Across Borders Among Palestinians” by Towibah Majdub, January 22, 2025.
- Call for Editors: Law & Society Review, 2025-2026, February 1, 2025.
- Call for Editors: Book Review Editor for Law & Society Review, 2025-2026, February 1, 2025.
- Conference: Eleventh Conference of the School of Mamluk Studies, Queen Mary University, UK, May 8-10, 2025 (Paper proposals: October 31, 2024; Panel proposals: November 30, 2024).
- Conference: Law and Society Association Annual Meeting, Chicago, May 22-25, 2025 (Registration: January 3, 2025).
- Conference: MESA 2025, Westin Downtown, Washington DC, November 22-25, 2025.
- Search for Editor: International Journal of Middle East Studies, until an appointment is made.
- 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.
- Call for Papers: Special Section – Lifewriting Annual and Islam.
- Call for Manuscripts: Advances in the Study of Islam, Edinburgh University Press.