SCHOLARSHIP ROUNDUP
On Islamic Law
- In “Underage Marriage: Legal and Social Practice in Muslim Jurisdictions” (Arab Law Quarterly), Dörthe Engelcke (Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law), Dominik Krell (University of Oxford) and Nadjma Yassari (Swiss Institute of Comparative Law) discuss “the social phenomenon of underage and early marriages on its legal framework, on family policies and on the reforms of the legal age of marriage that have occurred in selected Muslim jurisdictions. [The article] analyses what kind of mechanisms have been put in place to determine and regulate the age of marriage.”
- In “Reasons for Legal Difference Amongst the Four Sunni Schools of Law” (Berkeley Journal of Middle Eastern & Islamic Law), Dr. Ahmed Khater (Saint Mary’s College of California) analyses “Why do the four Sunni schools of Islamic law differ in their positions on legal questions?” He concludes that, “The principal reasons for this differing are found in the various areas of Islamic legal theory (uṣūl al-fiqh) and from this legal framework outline[s] a qualitative typology of the causes of differing.”
On Islam and Data Science
- In “Machines Referencing the Qurʾan: Citation Patterns in LLM-Generated Islam” (Journal of Digital Islamicate Research), Jonas Svensson (Linnaeus University) concludes that, “LLM s produce theologically differentiated citation patterns broadly consistent with known positions in Islamic discourse… [and] that non-human Islam, while mechanistically novel, exhibits structure, patterns, and theological coherence warranting sustained academic attention.”
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:
- Niru-yi Sivvum (The Third Force) was a publication linked to a reformist political movement in 1950s Iran, closely aligned with the Iran Party and Mohammad Mossadegh’s National Front. It promoted democratic socialism, anti-colonialism, and the nationalization of Iran’s oil resources, acting as a key voice for political advocacy and mobilization during a transformative period in Iranian history.
UPCOMING EVENTS AND OPPORTUNITIES
Events:
- Workshop: Archival Abundances and Silences in Islamic Studies, Princeton University, October 2–3, 2026
- Conference: Middle East Studies Association Annual Meeting, Boston, MA, November 21–24, 2026
- Conference: The Institutional Embedding of Shiʿi Imams: Kinship, Caliphs, Courts and Companions (700-900), University of Leiden, January 13–15, 2027
- Conference: Rupture or Continuity in Sharīʿa: (De)Colonizing Sharīʿa? International Conference, Centre for Islamic Studies (ISAM), Istanbul, Turkey, June 9–11, 2027
Opportunities:
- Award: Student Travel Award, Association for Gulf and Arabian Peninsula Studies, September 1, 2026
- Call for Papers: Legal Research & Analysis, September 29, 2026
- Call for Papers: Trends in Intellectual Property Research, September 30, 2026