ISLAMIC LAW IN THE NEWS The Aga Khan IV, the leader of the world's Ismaili Muslims, passed away earlier this month. The Program in Islamic Law at Harvard Law School offers its condolences to his family and the Ismaili community. "Islamist radic…  | By islamiclawblog on February 17, 2025 | ISLAMIC LAW IN THE NEWS - The Aga Khan IV, the leader of the world's Ismaili Muslims, passed away earlier this month. The Program in Islamic Law at Harvard Law School offers its condolences to his family and the Ismaili community.
- "Islamist radicals, long considered a fringe group in Bangladesh, managed to stop two women's football friendly matches in the north of the country in late January," with one protestor commenting: "Girls football is un-Islamic and it is our religious duty to stop anything that goes against our beliefs."
- Jhon Duran, a soccer player, is "said to be 'confused' over whether he must follow a strict Saudi Arabian law which Cristiano Ronaldo was allowed to bypass. . . . His reason for wanting to live in Bahrain is said to be related over concerns about whether he and his partner are able to live with one another in Saudi. Duran and his other half are not married and Islamic law discourages them living together without having tied the knot."
- As Saudi Arabia continues to implement its Vision 2030, "[t]he experiences of neighbouring countries offer both lessons and warnings, where they have permitted the regulated distribution of alcohol, the establishment of nightclubs, and a general relaxation of religious and cultural norms to cater to its international population, including the issuing of a gaming and gambling license."
- "A romantic drama about an elderly couple who share a night together to escape their loneliness has landed its Iranian directors with legal charges and pressure to stop its release internationally."
- "The Taliban's Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice said it had arrested four people in the northern provinces of Takhar and Faryab for reciting religious poetry, known as naat, in a style resembling music." For more content and context on the recent developments in Afghanistan, consult our Editor-in-Chief, Professor Intisar Rabb's "Resource Roundup: Afghanistan, the Taliban, and Islamic Law."
- "The Al-Habibiyya Islamic Society has disbursed ₦15m in Zakat to 90 beneficiaries in Paduma Community, Federal Capital Territory (FCT) [Nigeria], providing much-needed relief to the less privileged."
- "A recent Pew Research Center report found that 55 percent of Muslim supporters of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) favor making sharia the official law for Muslims, while only 32 percent of all Turkish Muslims support the idea, with 65 percent opposing it."
- "A seminar organised by the Minaretein Center, affiliated with the College of Islamic Studies at Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU), in cooperation with the Doha International Family Institute [Qatar], shed light on the phenomenon of 'Family Silence and its Social Impacts', as part of the 'Contemporary Family' seminar series."
- "Penang [a Malaysian state] has announced plans to establish an 'Al-Azhar Endowment Chair Professor' in the field of syariah [i.e., sharīʿa] to bolster academic and cultural ties between the state and world-renowned Al-Azhar University."
CASES, FATWĀS, LEGISLATION ON ISLAMIC LAW - In India, the "Kerala High Court . . . questioned how the Kerala government could intervene in the ongoing land dispute in Munambam, when it appeared to be a private dispute between the waqf board and long-time occupants."
- "Iraq's top court has suspended implementation of three controversial bills passed last month by the country's parliament, including a measure that activists say undermines women's rights. . . .Earlier versions of the [bill] were seen as potentially opening the door to child marriage since some interpretations of Islamic law allow the marriage of girls in their early teens — or as young as 9. The final version passed by the parliament states that both parties must be 'adults,' without specifying the age of adulthood."
- "Top commanders of Iran's powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) have urged Ayatollah Khamenei to withdraw his fatwa which bars Tehran from using its nuclear capabilities to develop . . . nuclear weapons."
- "The Waqf (Amendment) Bill, introduced in the Lok Sabha [the lower house of India's bicameral legislature] on August 8, 2024, has proposed 572 amendments to the draft Bill, which anticipates renaming the Waqf Act of 1995 by dropping the name "Waqf." This will be done after the passage of The Mussalman Waqf (Repeal) Bill, 2024."
UPCOMING EVENTS AND OPPORTUNITIES PIL & Harvard Calendar: - Fellowship: Pforzheimer Fellowships, Harvard University, February 21, 2025.
- Middle East Beyond Borders Graduate Student Workshop: Youssef Ben Ismail (Amherst College), "Autonomous Subjects: Genealogies of Equality and Difference in the Late Ottoman Empire," February 24, 2025.
- Islamic Law Speaker Series: "The Genealogy of the Death Penalty for Apostasy and Blasphemy in Islam" by Mohsen Kadivar, Program in Islamic Law, March 11, 2025.
- Middle East Beyond Borders Graduate Student Workshop: "Law and Sufism in Modern South Asia." with M. Qasim Zaman (Princeton University), April 1, 2025.
- Islamic Law Speaker Series: "A Cultural History of the Arabic Book: Digital Explorations of Writerly Practices and Text Reuse" by Sarah Savant, Program in Islamic Law, April 8, 2025.
- Middle East Beyond Borders Graduate Student Workshop: Latifeh Aavani (Harvard University), "The Global Codification Movement and the Development of Legal Reforms in 19th-Century Iran," April 14, 2025.
- Fellowship: May-Crane Fellowships, Harvard University 2025 (deadline to be announced).
Calendar: - Workshop: CLSC | Socio-Legal Studies Workshop – "What's in a Muslim Name?: Evidence from the USPTO" with Tabrez Ebrahim, February 21, 2025.
- Writing Workshop: The American Institute for Maghrib Studies Graduate Student Writing Workshop, February 27-28, 2025 (Application deadline: January 3, 2025).
- IISMM Seminar Series: "Properties of the founders of waqfs; waqfs of families," IISMM, France (remote option), February 28, 2025.
- Postdoctoral Fellowship: Europe in the Middle East – The Middle East in Europe (EUME), Berlin, March 26, 2025.
- Call for Submissions: Journal of Legal Research & Analysis, volume 3, issue 1, April 15, 2025.
- IISMM Seminar Series: "The Economics of Waqf: From the Imperial to the Personal," IISMM, France (remote option), April 18, 2025.
- Conference: The 2025 Annual Conference of the Humanities and Social Sciences at LUMS, Lahore, April 18-20, 2025.
- Symposium: 12th Annual Graduate Symposium, hosted by the McGill Institute of Islamic Studies Student Council (MIISSC), Montreal, April 24, 2025 (deadline February 17, 2025).
- Workshop: Annual Comparative Law Work-in-Progress Workshop, May 1-3, 2025 (Call for Papers deadline: February 5, 2024).
- Call for Papers: 39th Annual Middle East History and Theory Conference (MEHAT), University of Chicago, May 2-3, 2025 (Deadline: January 31, 2025).
- Call for Papers: " Islamic and Jewish Law in the Modern Economy," University of Villanova School of Law, Villanova, Pennsylvania, May 5-6, 2025 (Abstract submission deadline: January 31, 2025).
- Conference: Eleventh Conference of the School of Mamluk Studies, Queen Mary University, UK, May 8-10, 2025 (Paper proposals: October 31, 2024; Panel proposals: November 30, 2024).
- IISMM Seminar Series: "From Jerusalem to India: Endowments and Gender Influences," IISMM, France, May 16, 2025.
- LSA 2025 Annual Meeting: Chicago, Illinois from May 22-25, 2025 (Early registration: December 3, 2024; registration: January 3, 2025).
- Call for Papers: "Towards a Global Ecological-Economic Legal Framework," ESIL IG, Paris, June 6-7, 2025 (deadline February 28, 2025).
- 2025 Hurst Summer Institute: Legal History, University of Wisconsin Law School, June 15-27, 2025.
- Conference: Law, Culture, and Humanities 27th Annual Conference, Georgetown University, June 17-18, 2025 (Call for Papers deadline: January 31, 2025).
- IISMM Seminar Series: "Waqfs, women and circles of power," IISMM, France (remote option), June 20, 2025.
- Conference: The Middle Ages in the Modern World, London Strand Campus, King's College London, June 24-26, 2025 (Call for Papers deadline: January 13, 2025).
- Summer Language Intensive Program: Istanbul University Institute for Islamic Studies, July 7 – August 8, 2025.
- Conference: MESA 2025, Westin Downtown, Washington DC, November 22-25, 2025 (Proposal deadline: February 13, 2025).
- Position opening: Senior Lecturer in Law, History, and Society, Vanderbilt University, 2025.
- Search for Editor: International Journal of Middle East Studies, until an appointment is made.
- Internship opportunity: The Executive Office of the President, White House, various deadlines.
- Position opening: Academic mentor and field researcher in Iraq, Cordoba Peace Institute-Geneva (CPI) & ETH Zurich, rolling basis.
- Position opening: Academic mentor for researcher in Mogadishu, Cordoba Peace Institute-Geneva (CPI) & ETH Zurich.
- Call for Papers: Special Section – Lifewriting Annual and Islam.
- Call for Manuscripts: Advances in the Study of Islam, Edinburgh University Press.
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