Guest Bloggers

By Haroon Bashir While the gradual abolition thesis gained popularity, as demonstrated in the previous essay, it was by no means universally accepted.  Scholars such as Ḥusayn al-Jisr (d. 1327/1909) … Continue reading Preserving the Past: Slavery, Tradition and Legal Authority

By Haroon Bashir It is often stated in contemporary discussions on slavery and Islam, almost to the point of ubiquity, that Islam always aimed to abolish slavery.[1] Yet, the first … Continue reading Abolitionist Trajectories? Modern Rereadings of Emancipation

By Haroon Bashir Slavery has been a near-universal institution throughout human history, and its formal abolition is a relatively recent development.[1] Like all scholars, Muslim jurists were shaped by their … Continue reading The Emancipatory Ethic? Freedom in Classical Islamic Law

Dr. Haroon Bashir is Associate Professor of Contemporary Islam at the Markfield Institute of Higher Education. His research explores contemporary Islamic thought, Quranic hermeneutics, and the ethical engagement of Muslim … Continue reading Welcome to our May Guest Blogger: Haroon Bashir

Editor’s Note: In the previous three essays of this series, Dominik Krell explored codification, muftis, and legal change in contemporary Saudi Arabia. In this final essay, Muhammad Zubair Abbasi takes … Continue reading Expanding Muslim Women’s Right to Divorce: Judicial Khulʿ in Saudi Arabia’s Personal Status Law and Muslim Personal Law in South Asia

By Dominik Krell Introduction Saudi Arabia has a reputation for harsh criminal punishments. In 2025, a record number of 356 people were executed in the Kingdom.[1] Apart from the extensive … Continue reading The Expansion of Taʿzīr in Modern Saudi Arabia

By Dominik Krell Introduction In 2016, a short video clip circulated on the internet, in which the Saudi scholar Ṣāliḥ b. Fawzān al-Fawzān answered questions in a TV broadcast. A … Continue reading The New Grand Mufti and the Future of Islamic Law in Saudi Arabia

By Dominik Krell Introduction Over the last decade, the Saudi government has introduced foreign law on a large scale. In many areas, legislation borrowed from Europe and North America now … Continue reading Is Saudi Arabia’s Legal System Still ‘Islamic’?

Dominik Krell is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies, University of Oxford, and a Junior Research Fellow at Wolfson College. His research focuses on the … Continue reading Welcome to our April Guest Bloggers: Dominik Krell and Muhammad Zubair Abbasi