Islamic law scholarship round-up

In “From Militant Democracy to a Rights-Based Paradigm: The Evolution of the Turkish Constitutional Court’s Interpretation of Secularism” (Law and Governance: South East Europe), Batuhan Ustabulut (University of Antwerp) observes that “after the establishment of the Turkish Constitutional Court (TCC) which was founded by the Constitution of 1961, it has been observed that the TCC… CONTINUE READING

In “Rethinking marriage—and divorce—in Muslim Indonesia” (University of Colorado Boulder Blog) “CU Boulder sociologist Rachel Rinaldo’s research uncovers how Indonesian women are re-shaping marriage and its end within Islamic law, with implications far beyond Southeast Asia.” In “Inhabiting the Threshold (Dihlīz): The Madrasa Between Inheritance and Interrogation” (Hashiya), Ebrahim Moosa (University of Notre Dame) asks… CONTINUE READING

In a recent episode of New Books in Islamic Studies, Shehnaz Haqqani (Mercer University) and Edith Szanto (University of Alabama) “explore specific Muharram practices, including self-flagellation, the wedding of Qasim, and other ritualized forms of mourning, as well as gendered dynamics in who participates and why. [They] discuss what these practices looked like on the… CONTINUE READING

In How Commerce Became Legal: Merchants and Market Governance in Nineteenth-Century Egypt (Stanford University Press), Omar Youssef Cheta (Syracuse University) observes that “when Egypt’s markets opened to private capital in the 1840s, a new infrastructure of commercial laws and institutions emerged. Egypt became the site of profound legal experimentation, and the resulting commercial sphere reflected… CONTINUE READING

In Ethnographic Reflections on Marriage in Dhofar, Oman (Anthem Press), Marielle Risse (Dhofar University) “examines how middle-class Muslim men and women in Dhofar, Oman, make and negotiate marital choices, tracing every stage of marriage through their own personal accounts.” In “Echoes of Empire: Persian Kingship in the Medieval Islamic World” (The Multicultural Middle Ages Podcast),… CONTINUE READING

In “Three lives, one vision: how Dunant, Demidoff and Abdelkader shaped modern humanitarianism” (ICRC Blog) International Committee of the Red Cross experts Anastasia Kushleyko, Cédric Cotter, and Ahmed Al-Dawoody “revisit the contributions of Swiss businessman Henry Dunant, Russian philanthropist Anatole Demidoff, and Algerian scholar and leader Emir Abdelkader. Through their efforts to protect prisoners of war,… CONTINUE READING

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