Islamic law scholarship round-up

In “The Moroccan Mellāḥ: Governing Jewish Spaces and the Islamic Secular” (Turkish Journal of Islamic Studies), Rachel M. Scott (Virginia Tech University) “examines the Moroccan institution of the mellāḥ—the walled Jewish quarters established in Fez, Marrakesh, Meknes, and Tetouan from 1438 onward—as a case study for testing Sherman Jackson’s distinction between the sharʿī and non-sharʿī… CONTINUE READING

Mohammad Fadel (University of Toronto) offers a critical review of Sherman A. Jackson’s The Islamic Secular in a recent issue of the Turkish Journal of Islamic Studies. Fadel characterizes Jackson’s central concept as a modality of secularity internal to the Islamic tradition that, unlike its Western counterpart, does not devalue religion but instead sustains Islamically-inflected… CONTINUE READING

In “Female Madrasas and Islamic Agency of Afghan Girls and Women: How Religious Education is Being Used by Afghan Women and Girls under the Taliban Regime” (Manchester Journal of Transnational Islamic Law & Practice), Haroun Rahimi (American University of Afghanistan) and Faiza Muhammad Din (Humboldt University Berlin) examine “the potential of female madrasas in Afghanistan… CONTINUE READING

In “Women, Violence, and Law: A Critical Analysis of Women’s Rights in Afghanistan,” (Mapping Futures for Afghanistan, ed. Arif Saba et al, Routledge), Nazifa Haqpal (School of Oriental and African Studies) “critically analyzes the complex interplay of law, socio-cultural norms, and gender power relations in Afghanistan, focusing on the persistent issue of violence against women… CONTINUE READING

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