- In “What Do Sources Say about Agricultural Slavery (and Why Don’t They Say More)? A Study on Legal Sources for Early Islamic Ifrīqiya” (Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient), Antonia Bosanquet (Utrecht University) “examines the evidence for agricultural slavery in early Islamic Ifrīqiya and relates it to the existing historiography on the topic. [She] argues that legal texts, which are used more than other sources to understand slavery and slave labor, are of limited value for understanding agricultural slavery and that references in other text genres should be given more weight.”
- In “Enforcement Matters: How Nigeria’s Sharia Reform Created Winners and Losers” (World Bank Blogs), Hardi Ahmed (University of Alicante) observes that “child nutrition improved across West Africa from 1990 to 2018. Ghana, Senegal, and Côte d’Ivoire reduced stunting to about 17 to 21 percent. Southern Nigeria followed the same path. Northern Nigeria did not.” He argues that “the answer to this peculiar health crisis lies in an institutional reform that transformed criminal justice across 12 northern states. In January 2000, Zamfara State adopted Sharia Penal Codes (SPC), transferring criminal jurisdiction from secular to Islamic courts. Within months, 11 other states followed.”
- In “Shari’ah Appraisal of Juvenile Justice System Act 2018” (LLM thesis), Mujeeb ur Rahman (International Islamic University) “examines the juvenile justice framework in Pakistan with specific focus on the Juvenile Justice System Act (JJSA) 2018 in light of Islamic Sharīʿah principles. [He] evaluates whether the Act, which aims to protect and rehabilitate children in conflict with the law, aligns with Islamic teachings and Pakistan’s constitutional requirement to enforce laws consistent with Sharīʿah. The study addresses core issues such as the definition of a juvenile, the age of criminal responsibility, rehabilitation, and diversionary practices.”