In the wake of anti-sharīʿa marches across the United States, Senior Scholar Asifa Quraishi-Landes clarifies in the Religion News Service the history of state and religious law in Islamic legal history. Read the entire article. "To make things even more complicated for American observers, fiqh doesn’t neatly fit into Western categories of law and morality. … Continue reading “How anti-Shariah marches mistake Muslim concepts of state and religious law”: Asifa Quraishi-Landes in the Religion News Service
Cromwell Fellowships
In 2017, the William Nelson Cromwell Foundation will make available a number of $5,000 fellowship awards to support research and writing in American legal history by early-career scholars. Early career generally includes those researching or writing a PhD dissertation (or equivalent project) and recent recipients of a graduate degree working on their first major monograph … Continue reading Cromwell Fellowships
Call for Papers: International Society for Islamic Legal Studies Conference 2018 (Helsinki and Tampere, Finland)
The International Society of Islamic Legal Studies (ISILS) invites paper proposals for its IX Islamic Law and Society conference, to be held in Helsinki and Tampere, Finland, June 6–9, 2018. Unlike previous conferences, the conference will be open topic - presentations on all aspects of Islamic law, from earliest to most recent times, are welcome. … Continue reading Call for Papers: International Society for Islamic Legal Studies Conference 2018 (Helsinki and Tampere, Finland)
Call for Applications: Iran Graduate Student Workshop at University of Pennsylvania
On May 4-5, 2018, the University of Pennsylvania will host the second gathering of this joint workshop, to be followed by similar meetings at the other campuses every two years. This second workshop in 2018 will consist of PhD students that are near ABD status and preparing their dissertation proposals (i.e., typically in their 2nd … Continue reading Call for Applications: Iran Graduate Student Workshop at University of Pennsylvania
Call for Papers: Governance and Violence in Islamic Law
A workshop to be held on 14th November 2017 by The Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies at the University of Exeter. Funded by the Understanding Sharia Project http://www.usppip.eu. The Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, the University of Exeter, invites paper proposals on the topic of “Governance and Violence in Islamic Law” for this one-day … Continue reading Call for Papers: Governance and Violence in Islamic Law
Conference: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam: Religious Communities and Communities of Knowledge
Hosted by IAS-IIAS Advanced School in the Humanities June 12-14, 2017 Grad students from Princeton and beyond are very welcome to attend the sessions. See the program here.
Circulaire Bank al-Maghrib
This is a memorandum (circulaire) issued by the shari'a board of the Central Bank of Morocco (Bank al-Maghrib) in January 2017. The document contains fatwās pertaining to Islamic financial instruments such as murābaḥa and regulations concerning its practice and penalties. See document and see the interview with a sharīʿa auditor at Dar Assafaa.
Islamic Finance: New Developments in Morocco’s Sharīʿa-Compliant Banking
Interview conducted by Ari Schriber, Morocco Editor Nour-Eddine Qaouar is a PhD Candidate in the Faculty of Letters and Humanities at Muhammad V University (Rabat, Morocco) where he studies the applicability of finance-related fatwās from classical sharīʿa to contemporary questions of Islamic finance. He is also Sharīʿa Auditor at Dar Assafaa, the Islamic window of … Continue reading Islamic Finance: New Developments in Morocco’s Sharīʿa-Compliant Banking
Watts v. Byars (D.S.C. 2013): Religious Accommodations for Prisoners
The Plaintiff, Marcus Leeotis Watts, sued the Respondents, various prison officials at the Perry Correctional Institution in South Carolina, for allegedly violating his rights under RLUIPA and the First Amendment when the prison failed to provide Muslim prisoners with ḥalāl meat. The Respondents contended that the vegetarian meal option that complied with Islamic law was adequate, … Continue reading Watts v. Byars (D.S.C. 2013): Religious Accommodations for Prisoners
NYT Excerpt: Ruud Peters in “Indonesians Seek to Export a Modernized Vision of Islam”
From The New York Times, May 1st, 2017 "...The 2006 painting has become the symbol of a global initiative by the Indonesian youth wing of Nahdlatul Ulama, the largest mass Islamic organization in the world, that seeks to reinterpret Islamic law dating from the Middle Ages in ways that conform to 21st-century norms. Among other … Continue reading NYT Excerpt: Ruud Peters in “Indonesians Seek to Export a Modernized Vision of Islam”
