Islamic law scholarship round-up

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

In “Religious Elites and the Management of Islamic Affairs in Sarawak: A Mixed Scorecard” (Fulcrum), Mohd Faizal Musa (ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute) argues that “political rather than religious authority still calls the shots in multi-religious Sarawak.” In “Ahmad al-Sharaa Is Building the State Abu Mohammed al-Golani Promised” (Lawfare), Sara Harmouch (H9 Defense) argues that the “new… CONTINUE READING

In “When the Internet Goes Dark: What Medieval Islamic Philosophy Reveals About Legal Personhood” (JURISTnews), AmirAli Maleki, “an international law and philosophy researcher based in Iran, argues that al-Fārābī’s medieval concept of the ‘stranger’—one who exists within a political order but is denied the capacity for ethical participation—illuminates how contemporary international law transforms human beings… CONTINUE READING

In “Beyond the Secular Binary: Bargaining with God in Modern Constitutions” (International Society of Public Law Blog), Ali Shirvani (Northwest University) observes that “few questions have haunted modern constitutional theory as persistently as the relationship between divine authority and popular sovereignty. While this tension is a global phenomenon present in various religious traditions, it has… CONTINUE READING

“John Tolan’s Islam: A New History from Muhammad to the Present (Princeton University Press) offers a sweeping account of Islam’s evolution, highlighting influential figures, sectarian divisions, and global expansion. Though it lacks in-depth exploration of some claims and underplays Sufi contributions to the religion’s development, Haider Ali [Jamia Millia Islamia] finds it an engaging and… CONTINUE READING