2024-2025 Event CalendarPIL convenes an Islamic Law Speaker Series that provides a forum for established and emerging scholars to talk about their own recent scholarship, works-in-progress, or developments in the field. Unless otherwise noted, all sessions will be convened and moderated by Dr. Bahman Khodadadi, the 2024-2025 PIL-LC Fellow at the Program in Islamic Law. The SHARIAsource Lab, convened by Professor Intisar Rabb and research data scientist Noah Tashbook, brings together students and researchers to focus on emerging tools in the Islamic digital humanities / data science space, and to developing new components of our in-house data science tools.
MON/THUR beginning 9 SEP 2024 | 3.30-5.30p US EST
SHARIAsource Lab :: Islamic Law + Data Science
By Invitation/Application Only (option of 1CR)
Our SHARIAsource Lab provides an opportunity for students interested in assessing the way Islamic law functions in modern and historical contexts to work on discrete and directed research projects that use digital tools for research on interpretation in Islamic law (with focus on Islamic legal textualism and legal canons of construction) in a collaborative, interactive setting. The suite of digital tools that lab members will use in preparation and testing of the data operate under a project called “Courts & Canons”—a platform designed to explore courts, interpretation, and regulation of Islamic law. In the course of the lab work, students will select one or more legal canons related to legislation and interpretation in Muslim-majority countries to explore through data collection and preparation, and they will conduct research on questions of Islamic law that allows them to gain familiarity on pressing issues in the field and to test and refine AI tools. Typical research areas may include (but are not limited to) issues of Islamic criminal law, family law, and comparative constitutional law. Open lab sessions will be held on Mondays and Thursdays 3:30-5:30PM US EST.
TUE 8 OCT 2024 | 12.30-1.30p US EST | via Zoom
Islamic Law Speaker Series :: Recep Senturk (Hamad Bin Khalifa University)
Book Talk: Ādamiyyah: I am Therefore I Have Rights (Usul Academy Press, 2025)
On Tuesday, October 8, 2024, at 12:30-1:30PM US EST via Zoom, Professor Recep Senturk (Hamad Bin Khalifa University) will present Ādamiyyah: I am Therefore I have Rights (Usul Academy Press, 2025). This book explores the concept of ādamiyya and ḥuqūq al-ādamiyyīn in Islamic law and its implications in practice from the time of Prophet Muḥammad, His Predecessors, the Umayyad and Abbasid periods, Andalusia and the Islamic rule in India. Special attention is paid to how the concept of ādamiyya was used in relation to non-ahl al-kitāb people such as Buddhists, Hindus, and Zoroastrians under Islamic rule. The book argues that the universalistic view of Islamic law based on the concept of ādamiyya went into eclipse with the rise of nation states in the Muslim and it needs to be revived again.
TUE 12 NOV 2024 | 12.30-1.30p US EST | via Zoom
Islamic Law Speaker Series :: Ali Rod Khadem (Suffolk University)
Islamic Apocalyptic Jurisprudence: End-Times Law in Sunnī and Shīʿī Discourses (Islamic Law and Society 31, no. 3 (2024))
On Tuesday, November 12, 2024, at 12:30-1:30PM US EST via Zoom, Professor Ali Rod Khadem (Suffolk University) will present "Islamic Apocalyptic Jurisprudence: End-Times Law in Sunnī and Shīʿī Discourses" (Islamic Law and Society 31, no. 3 (2024)). This talk explores theories of the final legal system that will govern humanity in the End Times, as envisioned in the apocalyptic discourses of several Sunnī and Shīʿī case studies. Key themes include the sources of law, the role of jurists, conflicts between Islamic, Jewish, Christian, and international legal systems, changes to classical Islamic legal theory, and the introduction of new laws and policies in the apocalyptic era. The presentation will highlight how the lens of apocalypticism enables movements and thinkers to advocate for radical changes to the foundations and particulars of Islamic law, while still claiming to operate within the boundaries of Islamic orthodoxy.
TUE 10 DEC 2024 | 12.30-1.30p US EST | via Zoom
Islamic Law Speaker Series :: Bahman Khodadadi (Harvard Law School)
Book Talk: On Theocratic Criminal Law: The Rule of Religion and Punishment in Iran (Oxford University Press, 2024)
On Tuesday, December 10, 2024, at 12:30-1:30PM US EST via Zoom, Dr. Bahman Khodadadi (Harvard Law School) will present On Theocratic Criminal Law: The Rule of Religion and Punishment in Iran (Oxford University Press, 2024). This talk explores the roots and structures of the criminal law system of the world's most prominent constitutional theocracy, the Shīʿī theocracy. While discussing the processes of de-westernization, which occurred in the wake of the Islamic Revolution, this work examines how the Islamic conception of civil order and polity has been established within the legal and theological framework of the Iranian Constitution. The presentation offers a 'rational reconstruction' of the theocratic criminal law and offers a critical analysis of the way criminal law functions as the centerpiece of this mode of theocratic domination. It illuminates how this revelation-based, punitive ideology functions, how the current Islamic Penal Code mirrors prevailing Shīʿī jurisprudence. It also explores the jurisprudential principles and dynamic power of Shīʿī Islam not only as a driving force behind political and social change but as a force that has been capable of forging a whole theocratic legal system.
TUE 11 FEB 2025 | 12.30-1.30p US EST | via Zoom
Islamic Law Speaker Series :: Malika Zeghal (Harvard University)
Book Talk: The Making of the Modern Muslim State: Islam and Governance in the Middle East and North Africa (Princeton University Press, 2024)
On Tuesday, February 11, 2025, at 12:30-1:30PM US EST via Zoom, Professor Malika Zeghal (Harvard University) will present The Making of the Modern Muslim State: Islam and Governance in the Middle East and North Africa (Princeton University Press, 2024). This book reframes the role of Islam in modern Middle East governance. Challenging other accounts that claim that Middle Eastern states turned secular in modern times, Professor Zeghal shows instead the continuity of the state’s custodianship of Islam as the preferred religion. Drawing on intellectual, political, and economic history, she traces this custodianship from early forms of constitutional governance in the nineteenth century through post–Arab Spring experiments in democracy. She argues that the intense debates around the implementation and meaning of state support for Islam led to a political cleavage between conservatives and their opponents that long predated the polarization of the twentieth century that accompanied the emergence of mass politics and Islamist movements. Examining constitutional projects, public spending, school enrollments, and curricula, Professor Zeghal shows that although modern Muslim-majority polities have imported Western techniques of governance, the state has continued to protect and support the religion, community, and institutions of Islam. She finds that even as Middle Eastern states have expanded their nonreligious undertakings, they have dramatically increased their per capita supply of public religious provisions, especially Islamic education—further feeding the political schism between Islamists and their adversaries.
TUE 11 MAR 2025 | 12.30-1.30p US EST | via Zoom
Islamic Law Speaker Series :: Mohsen Kadivar (Duke University)
The Genealogy of the Death Penalty for Apostasy and Blasphemy in Islam
On Tuesday, March 11, 2025, at 12:30-1:30PM US EST via Zoom, Professor Mohsen Kadivar (Duke University) will present “The Genealogy of the Death Penalty for Apostasy and Blasphemy in Islam.” This talk examines a few ḥadith that are attributed to the Prophet that support a penalty for apostasy, especially execution, that have been the foundation of this ruling of criminal law in conservative Islam. They are not only conjectural isolated ḥadith that directly contradict the Qurʾān but were also fabricated and forged under the influence of Jewish literature during the Umayyad and Abbasid dynasties. The so-called prophetic ḥadith of “Kill the one who changes his religion” was the product of the eighth and ninth centuries. The ruling of killing apostates entered Shīʿī law from the Sunni legal schools. From the tenth century onwards, narrations on the penalty for apostasy as well as blasphemy of the Prophet (and even the Imams), in the most restrictive sense, have been attributed to the Shīʿī Imams, although most of them are considered weak, having no chain of transmitters, or contain unknown individuals in the chain.
TUE 8 APR 2025 | 12.30-1.30p US EST | via Zoom
Islamic Law Speaker Series :: Sarah Savant (Aga Khan University)
A Cultural History of the Arabic Book: Digital Explorations of Writerly Practices and Text Reuse
On Tuesday, April 8, 2025, at 12:30-1:30PM US EST via Zoom, Professor Sarah Savant (Aga Khan University) will present "A Cultural History of the Arabic Book: Digital Explorations of Writerly Practices and Text Reuse." This talk explores how one could reconstruct how major authors in the Arabic language from the eighth to sixteenth centuries wrote their books– the sources they used, what they copied out, and the scholars they knew. For most of these authors, reusing earlier works was the starting point for creating new ones. They abbreviated long works to make short ones, commented on short ones to make long ones, and mined general histories to compose works on specific themes. In these and many other ways, authors produced an enormously intertextual tradition, shaping how later individuals and communities would remember their pasts and conceive of their affiliations to groups bound by locality, profession, religion, tribe, ethnicity and other shared traits. To make the reconstruction of these relations possible on a large scale, the KITAB (Knowledge, Information Technology, & the Arabic Book) project built a digital corpus of thousands of these early Arabic books comprising more than two billion words. The talk addresses topics ranging from religion, philosophy and language to history, geography, medicine and astronomy, that were written over the first ten centuries of Islam in a region spanning from modern Spain to Central and South Asia. The team then utilized a text reuse detection algorithm to create an original data set that documents word-for-word relationships among all these books. This talk will visualize and investigate the broad patterns of text reuse using the KITAB data set and forensically analyze individual works to observe the tradition both from a satellite perspective and through a microscope, as it were.
RELATED EVENTS & OPPORTUNITIES @ HARVARD
MON 23 SEP 2024 | 11.00a-12.00p US EST | Divinity Hall
Book Talk :: Hussein Rashid (Harvard Divinity School)
Islam in North America: An Introduction
On Monday, September 23, 2024, at 11:00AM-12:00PM US EST at Divinity Hall, Hussein Rashid and Huma Mohibullah will give a book talk on Islam in North America: An Introduction (Bloomsbury, 2024). This book challenges readers to move beyond simple identifiers and consider how these identifiers intersect with factors like gender, class, race, sexuality, and ability. Offering a multidisciplinary approach, it explores diverse expressions of Islam, illustrated with over 75 images, and includes a glossary and suggested readings.
MON 7 OCT 2024 | 12.00-1.30p US EST | Harvard Museum of the Ancient Near East 201
Seminar :: Robert Hefner (Boston University)
Islam and Citizenship in Indonesia: Nahdlatul Ulama and the Quest for an Inclusive Public Ethics
On Monday, October 7, 2024, at 12:00-1:30PM US EST at the Harvard Museum of the Ancient Near East, Robert Hefner will hold a seminar titled “Islam and Citizenship in Indonesia: Nahdlatul Ulama and the Quest for an Inclusive Public Ethics.” The seminar will examine the conditions facilitating democracy, women’s rights, and inclusive citizenship in Indonesia, the most populous Muslim-majority country and the third largest democracy in the world. It will discuss how Muslim understandings of Islamic traditions and ethics have coevolved with the understanding and practice of democracy and citizen belonging.
FRI 25 OCT 2024 | 2.00-3.30p US EST | The Memorial Church
A Service in Memory of Roy Parviz Mottahedeh :: Center for Middle Eastern Studies
On Friday, October 25, 2024, at 2:00-3:30PM US EST at the Memorial Church in Harvard Yard, the Center for Middle Eastern Studies has organized a service in memory of Profess Roy Parviz Mottahedeh. This will be followed by a reception at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies.
Harvard Events and Opportunities
Global Events in Islamic Law
Global Opportunities in Islamic Law
