ISLAMIC LAW IN THE NEWS
- “The Sharia-Free America Caucus held its first media conference on Tuesday, as some Republicans in Congress move to pre-emptively ban Islamic law being applied anywhere in the US – even though there have been no known attempts to do so.”
CASES AND FATWĀS
- In Egypt, a new proposal calls for the “establishment of a ‘national human tissue bank’ and the activation of an organ and tissue donation system after death.” In response, “Ahmed Karima, a professor of comparative jurisprudence and Islamic law at Al-Azhar University, said donating human skin remains highly disputed among Islamic scholars.”
- Egypt‘s “Dar Al Iftaa has ruled that a circulating TikTok challenge involving the pouring of boiling tea on people’s hands is prohibited under Islamic law, citing the deliberate infliction of harm and the risk it poses to bodily safety.”
- “Authorities in the Malaysian state of Kelantan have charged a transgender woman under Islamic law for ‘allegedly changing sex’, initiating what activists and human rights groups say is the first criminal case of its kind in Malaysia.” For more content and context on Islamic law in Malaysia, consult our Editor-in-Chief Professor Intisar Rabb’s “Legislation and Regulation of Islamic Law in Malaysia” and its appended resource roundup.
- “The Taliban penal code has granted their leader sweeping powers to declare otherwise permitted acts mandatory or forbidden, a move that has drawn sharp criticism from religious scholars and women’s rights groups.” Meanwhile, the “Taliban’s Ministry of Justice [announced] that all legislative documents issued by the group are based on Islamic law and warned that objections to those laws would be considered a crime.” 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.”
- “Kazakhstan’s top Muslim body has issued a religious ruling addressing the use of deepfake technology, warning that its misuse to spread falsehoods and deceive the public violates Islamic law.”
- “A Muslim cleric who presided over the wedding of an underage couple has been spared jail after breaking a new law banning child marriage in England and Wales.”
UPCOMING EVENTS AND OPPORTUNITIES
PIL & Harvard Events:
- Workshop: Middle East Beyond Borders—Chris Rominger, “Sea Changes: Trans-Mediterranean Lives and Networks at the Turn of the 20th Century,” February 9, 2026 @ 6:15pm
- Islamic Law Speaker Series: Sohaira Siddiqui (Georgetown University), “Islamic Law on Trial: Contesting Colonial Power in British India,” February 10, 2026 @ 12:30pm
- Workshop: Middle East Beyond Borders—Giovanni DiRusso, “The Textual Tradition of the Arabic Apocalypse of Peter: Variance and Adaptation in a Christian Arabic Apocalypse,” February 23, 2026 @ 7:15pm
- Islamic Law Speaker Series: Ihsan Yilmaz (Deakin University), “Sharia as Informal Law: Lived Experiences of Young Muslims in Western Societies,” March 10, 2026 @ 12:30pm
- Workshop: Middle East Beyond Borders—Cem Turkoz, “An Edifice of Super-Glosses: The Making of an Ottoman Tradition of Natural Philosophy, 1650–1800,” March 23, 2026 @ 6:15pm
- Islamic Law Speaker Series: Sherman Jackson (University of Southern California), “The Islamic Secular,” April 7, 2026 @ 12:30pm
- Workshop: Arabic TEI (Textual Encoding Initiative), April 2–3, 2026
- Workshop: Middle East Beyond Borders—Amadu Kunateh, “Footnote to Ghazali: Philosophy Without Falsafa in West African Intellectual Archive,” April 6, 2026 @ 6:15pm
- Workshop: Middle East Beyond Borders—Djelemory Diabate, “Closing the Sufi Age: Authority, Finality, and Political Theology in Umar al-Futi Tal’s Kitab Rimah,” April 20, 2026 @ 6:15pm
PIL & Harvard Opportunities:
- Call for Applications: 2026–2027 PIL Research Fellowship, February 13, 2026
Global Events:
- Conference: Annual Meeting of the Medieval Academy of America, Amherst, MA, March 19–21, 2026
- Conference: Humanities of AI—Intelligence and Imitation: Mind, Mechanism, Mimesis, Johns Hopkins University, April 24–26, 2026
- Conference: American Society for Premodern Asia Annual Meeting, Los Angeles, CA, April 24–27, 2026
- Conference: Middle East History and Theory Conference (MEHAT), University of Chicago, May 1–2, 2026
- Workshop: The Law and Humanities Workshop for Junior Scholars, University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, June 8–9, 2026
- Conference: Association for the Study of Law, Culture, and the Humanities Annual Conference, Chicago, June 17–18, 2026
- Conference: Middle East Studies Association Annual Meeting, Boston, MA, November 21–24, 2026
Global Opportunities:
- Call for Panels: Middle East Medievalists at MESA 2026, February 12, 2026
- Call for Papers: Middle East Studies Association Annual Meeting, Boston, MA, February 17, 2026
- Call for Applications: Kamel Center Senior Postgraduate Fellowship, Yale Law School, February 20, 2026
- Call for Papers: Comparative Law Work-in-Progress Workshop, Princeton University, February 20, 2026
- Call for Proposals: UCLA Center for Near Eastern Studies Graduate Student Colloquium: The Visual Culture of Algeria Through Exchange, Circulation, and Global Networks, February 27, 2026
- Call for Applications: Orient-Institut Beirut Residential Postdoctoral Fellowship, March 1, 2026
- Call for Papers: Kathryn T. Preyer Scholars Program, American Society for Legal History, April 1, 2026
- Call for Participation: Digital Medieval Studies Institute, International Congress on Medieval Studies, Western Michigan University, May 13, 2026
- Position Opening: Visiting Assistant Professor of Medieval Middle East, Colby College, July 1, 2026
- Call for Participation: Digital Medieval Studies Institute, International Medieval Congress, Leeds, UK, July 10, 2026