Dr. Muhammad Zubair Abbasi is an academic lawyer specializing in family law, corporate and commercial law, Islamic law, and law & technology. He holds a DPhil from the University of Oxford and an LL.M in Corporate Governance from the University of Manchester.
Dr. Abbasi has held prestigious research and academic positions, including Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Foundation for International Peace & the Rule of Law in Heidelberg, Germany, and Research Fellow at the Oxford Department of International Development and the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies. He has also been a visiting scholar at the American University in Cairo and Westminster University, London. Currently, he is a Lecturer in Law at the School of Law and Social Sciences, Royal Holloway, University of London, where his research focuses on integrating generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) into legal education, lawyering, and adjudication.
He serves as the Editor of the Yearbook of Islamic and Middle Eastern Law and an Editor for Harvard Law School’s SHARIAsource. His research spans family law, Islamic law, human rights, constitutional law, and corporate governance. His notable publications include: Family Laws in Pakistan (Oxford University Press, 1st ed. 2018; 2nd ed. 2024), co-authored with Prof. Dr. S.A. Cheema; and Democracy under God: Constitutions, Islam, and Human Rights in the Muslim World (Cambridge University Press, 2023), co-authored with Dr. D.I. Ahmed. His current research focuses on integrating GenAI into Islamic legal education and transnational family laws in Saudi Arabia and the UK. In his other research project, he examines the judgments of the Federal Shariat Court—a special court mandated to exercise Islamic judicial review. This project analyses the sources, methodologies, and methodological tools used by the judges of the Federal Shariat Court and evaluates the impact of Islamization of laws upon the legal system in Pakistan within the framework of Islamic constitutionalism.
Post History
Authored Works
- ::Roundtable:: Augmented Learning: Generative Artificial Intelligence and Islamic Inheritance Law
- Conjoined Twins: Human Rights and Islam in the Constitutional System of Pakistan
- Islamic Judicial Review in Practice (3): Sharia and State Law
- Islamic Judicial Review in Practice (2): Strategic Islamization of Laws
- Islamic Judicial Review in Practice (1): Decolonization through Islamization of Laws
- The Impact of Islamic Judicial Review in Pakistan
- Islamic Constitutionalism in Pakistan: Is it Theocratic?
- Islamic Constitutionalism in Pakistan: Does it Matter?
- Marriage as Children’s Play: Unregistered Islamic Marriages under English Law
- Commentary :: Criminalization of Triple Ṭalāq in India: A Dilemma for Religiously Divorced but Legally Married Muslim Women
- Reasserting the Authority of State: Comment on Asia Bibi v The State
- Commentary: The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council and Islamic Endowments (Awqāf)
- In Response to the Indian Supreme Court’s Recent Decision on Triple Ṭalāq: A Legislative Proposal
- Federal Shariat Court of Pakistan on Surrogacy: From Judicial Islamization of Laws to Judicial Legislation
- Women’s Right to Divorce under Islamic Law in Pakistan and India
- The Long Shadow of England’s Privy Council Cast on the Islamic Law of Trusts in British India
Other Scholarship
- ::Roundtable:: Knowledge in the Islamic Court
- Islamic Law Scholars’ Round-Up: Apr 8
- Recent Scholarship: Abbasi on Islamic Divorce Law
- In the News: Triple Ṭalāq Criminalized in India
- FEATURE :: Roundtable on Pakistan’s Landmark Blasphemy Case: Asia Bibi v. The State (2018)
- Recent Scholarship: Cheema and Abbasi on Islamic Family Law in Pakistan
- Round-up on Triple Ṭalāq