By Janina Safran
The question arose in a recent round table discussion and is challenging to answer for three central reasons.[1] First are the usual problems of little textual evidence: The oldest surviving textual evidence produced in al-Andalus dates
Islamic Law Blog
The Islamic Law Blog, published by the Program in Islamic Law at Harvard Law School, covers a broad range of topics related to Islamic law and its historical, social, and contemporary contexts. It features scholarship on Islamic legal traditions, manuscript studies, and the evolution of Islamic jurisprudence across different regions and periods. The blog also discusses current legal developments, case law, fatwas, and legislative changes in Muslim-majority countries. Additionally, it explores intersections of Islamic law with modern issues such as technology, ethics, and governance. The blog includes analyses of Islamic legal history, family law, political and religious dynamics, and the role of Islamic institutions in society.
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Welcome to our June Guest Blogger: Janina Safran
Janina Safran is Associate Professor of History at The Pennsylvania State University. Her field is Islamic history (c. 600–1250), and her particular area of research is al-Andalus (Islamic Iberia) and the Maghrib (North Africa). Her work on the Umayyad period…
Thank you, Haroon Bashir!
Many thanks to Haroon Bashir for joining us as guest blog editor in May. In case you missed his essays, here they are:
- The Emancipatory Ethic? Freedom in Classical Islamic Law
- Abolitionist Trajectories? Modern Rereadings of Emancipation
- Preserving the Past:
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Competing Moral Logics: Islamic Law, Slavery, and Abolition in the Contemporary World
By Haroon Bashir
Debates regarding slavery and Islam have resurfaced in modern times, partly due to the re-emergence of slavery through the actions of groups such as ISIS and Boko Haram.[1] The revival of slave markets and slavery, justified…
Preserving the Past: Slavery, Tradition and Legal Authority
By Haroon Bashir
While the gradual abolition thesis gained popularity, as demonstrated in the previous essay, it was by no means universally accepted. Scholars such as Ḥusayn al-Jisr (d. 1327/1909) and Yūsuf al-Nabahānī (d. 1932) argued that abolition was…
Abolitionist Trajectories? Modern Rereadings of Emancipation
By Haroon Bashir
It is often stated in contemporary discussions on slavery and Islam, almost to the point of ubiquity, that Islam always aimed to abolish slavery.[1] Yet, the first explicit articulation of this claim emerged only in the…
The Emancipatory Ethic? Freedom in Classical Islamic Law
By Haroon Bashir
Slavery has been a near-universal institution throughout human history, and its formal abolition is a relatively recent development.[1] Like all scholars, Muslim jurists were shaped by their historical context—a world in which the slave trade was…
Welcome to our May Guest Blogger: Haroon Bashir
Dr. Haroon Bashir is Associate Professor of Contemporary Islam at the Markfield Institute of Higher Education. His research explores contemporary Islamic thought, Quranic hermeneutics, and the ethical engagement of Muslim scholars with issues such as abolition, justice, and social reform.…
Thank you, Dominik Krell and Muhammad Zubair Abbasi!
Thank you, Dominik Krell and Muhammad Zubair Abbasi for joining us as guest blog editors in April. In case you missed their essays, here they are:
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Expanding Muslim Women’s Right to Divorce: Judicial Khulʿ in Saudi Arabia’s Personal Status Law and Muslim Personal Law in South Asia
Editor’s Note: In the previous three essays of this series, Dominik Krell explored codification, muftis, and legal change in contemporary Saudi Arabia. In this final essay, Muhammad Zubair Abbasi takes up these themes in a comparative context.
By Muhammad Zubair…