SCHOLARSHIP ROUNDUP
On Islamic Law
- In Islamic Law on Trial: Contesting Colonial Power in British India (University of California Press, 2025), Sohaira Z. M. Siddiqui (Georgetown University in Qatar) “interrogates the project of juridical colonization” in India and “demonstrates that alongside—and despite—the violent displacement of Muslim legal sovereignty, Muslims were able to engage with and even champion Islamic law from inside the colonial judiciary.”
- In “Mughals, Ottomans, and the Question of ‘Codes’ in Islamic Legal History: The Case of the Fatāwā-yi ʿĀlamgīrī (al-Fatāwā al-Hindīyya) from Early Modern Roots to Modern Legacies” (UCLA Journal of Islamic and Near Eastern Law 22 (2025)), Faiz Ahmed (Brown University) “explores how questions of codifying fiqh took on a new meaning with the groundbreaking juristic project…[of] ‘proto-codification.’”
On Islam and Data Science
- In “Aftina: Enhancing Stability and Preventing Hallucination in AI-based Islamic Fatwa Generation using LLMs and RAG” (Neural Computing and Applications (2025)), Marryam Yahya Mohammed (Nile University, Egypt) and others develop a “robust methodology to improve AI-driven fatwa systems, guaranteeing higher precision and trustworthiness in Islamic [question-answering] systems.”
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 new resources to this list:
- Tarajm is an online platform that “collects biographies of influential figures in Islamic history using trusted sources and a smart search engine.”
UPCOMING EVENTS AND OPPORTUNITIES
Calendar:
- Prize: Colin B. Picker Prize, Younger Comparativists Committee, August 15, 2025.
- Summer School: Philology and Manuscripts from the Muslim World, Leiden University, August 18-29, 2025 (Application deadline: May 5, 2025).
- Faculty Fellow: Faculty Fellow in Near Eastern Studies, New York University, 2025-2026, September 1, 2025 (Deadline: March 24, 2025).
- Summer School on Digital Humanities and Islamic Studies, September 1-4, 2025, Switzerland (Deadline: June 13, 2025).
- Call for Proposals: Paris Congress at 125: Comparative Law’s Entanglement with Power from Paris to Today, McGill University, Canada, October 16-18, 2025 (Deadline: May 31, 2025).
- Conference: 5th ACM Conference on Equity and Access in Algorithms, Mechanisms, and Optimization, University of Pittsburgh, November 5-7, 2025.
- Call for Papers: ASLH 2025 Annual Meeting, Detroit, MI, November 13-15, 2025 (Deadline: March 25, 2025).
- Call for Papers: International Conference “Poetry and Knowledge,” University of Münster, November 20-22, 2025 (Deadline: June 1, 2025).
- Conference: MESA 2025, Westin Downtown, Washington DC, November 22-25, 2025 (Proposal deadline: February 13, 2025).
- Position opening: Senior Lecturer in Law, History, and Society, Vanderbilt University, 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.