Islamic law scholarship round-up

The Oxford Handbook of Islamic Reform (Oxford University Press), edited by Emad Hamdeh (Embry-Riddle University) and Natana J. DeLong-Bas (Boston College), “provides a comprehensive examination of Islamic reform movements and reformist thought across different regions and time periods. Drawing on the expertise of leading scholars from around the world, it offers a rigorous and nuanced… CONTINUE READING

Erin Braatz (Suffolk University Law School) recently reviewed Rabiat Akande‘s (University of Toronto) Entangled Domains: Empire, Law and Religion in Northern Nigeria (Cambridge University Press). The book “confronts a paradox: the state insisted on its separation from religion even as it governed its multireligious population through what remained of the precolonial caliphate. Entangled Domains grapple… CONTINUE READING

In “Integrating Energy Justice and Maqasid al-Shariah to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in Malaysia” (International Review of Law), former PIL Senior Research Fellow Wan Mohd Zulhafiz bin Wan Zahari (International Islamic University) and others explore “how the integration of energy justice and Maqasid al-Shariah can enhance Malaysia’s ability to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals… CONTINUE READING

In The Islamic Reform Movement of the Association of Algerian ʿUlamaʾ, 1931–1954 (Brill), Shoko Watanabe (University of Tokyo) asks, “How are we to understand the internal dynamics of an Islamic reform movement that calls for nationalist rallies and joins a delegation to meet with the French Prime Minister but denies that it ‘does politics’? This… CONTINUE READING

In a recent podcast, Amanie Antar (University of Toronto) interviews Gijs Kruijtzer (independent scholar): “How do people justify what others see as transgression? Taking that question to the Persian-Muslim and Latin-Christian worlds over the period 1200 to 1700, Justifying Transgression: Muslims, Christians, and the Law (de Gruyter, 2023) shows that people in both these worlds… CONTINUE READING

In “Intellectual Practice and Manuscript Culture in Early Islamic North Africa” (Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā), Clément Salah (University of Oxford ) “examines the figure of Abū al-ʿArab al-Qayrawānī (d. 333/945) as a scribe-scholar in early Islamic North Africa, situating his manuscripts within the broader history of intellectual and material practices in Ifrīqiya.” The article argues that “the… CONTINUE READING

In “Inheritance as a God-Given Right: the Debate on the Family Waqf in 20th and 21st Century Saudi Arabia” (Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient), Dominik Krell (University of Oxford) shows that “that while the debate on the family waqf in other parts of the Arab world was dominated by the… CONTINUE READING

In “Perpetuating Property and Kinship: Matrilineal Family Waqfs in 20th-Century Colonial Malabar, South India” (Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient), Abdulla Niruvan Chalil (Jamia Millia Islamia) “examines family waqf practices among matrilineal families in Malabar during the British colonial period by analysing waqf deeds written in Malayalam” and argues that “family… CONTINUE READING

In “Reconfiguring Political Islam: A Discursive Tradition Approach” (American Journal of Islam and Society), Abbas Jong (Freie Universität Berlin) “reconceptualizes Political Islam through the analytic lens of discursive tradition, restructured within the framework of social configurations. Departing from essentialist, universalist, nominalist, and reductionist readings, the study foregrounds the epistemological contingencies and internal pluralities that characterize… CONTINUE READING

In “The Unfinished Nation: Constitutional Failure and Identity Crisis in Iran” (Constitutional Discourse), Batuhan Aydın (University of Szeged) “traces the origins of Iran’s constitutional identity crisis from the Qajar period to the present, trying to engage legal scholarship in the midst of current geopolitical developments.” In “Doctrinal change in Mālikī law: the case of judicial… CONTINUE READING