ISLAMIC LAW IN THE NEWS "Five years ago, while [a Canadian] couple were living in Pakistan, a court granted [them] adoption rights under a Sharia law known as kafala. This ..read more

ISLAMIC LAW IN THE NEWS In Istanbul, Turkey, the tombs of Islamic religious figures, including Sufi notables, have continued to receive pilgrims seeking divine intervention during the summer. In a speech marking the second anniversary of their takeover of the country, a Taliban spokesperson suggested that the ban on female education will remain in place ..read more

By Sohaib Baig In the previous essay, I explored the transmission of South Asian Muslim scholarship to the Ottoman Empire by analyzing contemporary holdings of Turkish manuscript collections. In this essay, I continue this exercise by analyzing Turkish print collections. I used the same union catalog of Turkish collections, which draws data from 24 libraries ..read more

By Sohaib Baig In the previous essay, I provided an overview of contemporary print collections for Islamic law in North American libraries. In the next two essays, I shift focus and explore the transmission of knowledge and texts from South Asia to the Ottoman Empire from current manuscript and print collections in Turkey. In the ..read more

SCHOLARSHIP ROUNDUP On Islamic Law In "Human Rights Norms from Below" (Yale Journal of International Law 48, no. 1 (2023)), Adnan A. Zulfiqar (Rutgers Law School) "argues that effective promotion of human rights requires engaging the society below, where a norm will operate, and crafting methods that will best advance norms in that context." Ahmad ..read more

ISLAMIC LAW IN THE NEWS In the wake of the current war, in a recent statement, the vice president of a Russian-owned bank argued that Russian interest in Islamic finance has risen. Top officials from Pakistan recently reiterated the country's commitment to interest-free banking by 2027. An Australian tourist who visited Aceh (Indonesia), recently “accused ..read more

ISLAMIC LAW IN THE NEWS Singapore, invoking the Internal Security Act, detained two people it considered to have "self-radicalized" by listening to speeches and statements made by Ismail Menk, "a Zimbabwean Salafi preacher, [who] has been banned from preaching in Singapore since 2015, because of his segregationist teachings, which promote religious disharmony." "Kenya Muslims National ..read more

ISLAMIC LAW IN THE NEWS "Eid al-Adha is marked by special prayers and feasts and follows Eid al-Fitr which marks the end of Ramadan." For many American Muslims, eid celebrations have served - and continue to serve - as a reminder of how important community is. "The Kerala High Court [India] has held that a ..read more

SCHOLARSHIP ROUNDUP On Islamic Law: In episode 521 of the Ottoman History Podcast, entitled "Islam and Science Fiction" and hosted by Shireen Hamza (Harvard University), Jörg Matthias Determann (Virginia Commonwealth University in Qatar) explores the "many overlapping and competing visions of Muslim Futurism." In "Majalla: Codification of the Norms of Islamic Law" (International Journal of ..read more

ISLAMIC LAW IN THE NEWS Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowed to cut interest rates, arguing that the cut is also in line with Islamic law. In a recent interview, one of the few female judges in Palestine, Kholoud al-Faqeeh, commenting on religious courts and women, stated: "A woman’s whole life cycle is before these ..read more