BRAIS 2026: Programme + Abstracts

Annual Conference of the British Association for Islamic Studies

Monday 18^th-Tuesday 19^th May 2026

10 Handyside Street, London, N1C 4DN

Conference Programme

The British Association for Islamic Studies is delighted to be returning to the Aga Khan University's Institute for the Study of Muslims Civilisations and The Institute of Ismaili Studies at the Aga Khan Centre, London, for its 2026 Annual Conference on 18 & 19 May 2026. 

Below you will find the provisional conference programme. Please be aware that the programme is likely to change in the months leading up to our conference. 

Day 1: Monday 18 May 2026

10.00 - 10.10: Words of Welcome (ACR)

Fozia Bora (University of Leeds, Chair of the British Association for Islamic Studies) and Jonas Otterbeck (ISMC). 

10.10 - 11.20: Opening Keynote (ACR)

Professor Ovamir Anjum (University of Toledo) 

'Managing Deep Differences: Notes on an Ummatic Political Theory'

Chair: Dr Hadiza Kere Abdulrahman (University of Lincoln)

11.20-11.30: BRAIS Prize in the Study of Islam and the Muslim World Announcement (ACR)

11:30-12:00: Refreshments

12.00-13.30: Panel Session 1   

Akhbārī Knowledge and the Reconfiguration of Shiʿi Scholarship in Late Safavid Iran (Room 219)

Chair: Majid Montazer Mahdi (Institute of Ismaili Studies)

Robert Gleave (University of Exeter) Safavid Akhbārī ḥadīth commentary: Muḥammad Taqī al-Majlisī’s Lawāmiʿ Ṣāhibqirānī 

A number of prominent Safavid Shīʿī religious scholars either claimed or were associated with the Akhbārī movement. Following the intervention by Muḥammad Amīn al-Astarābādī (d.1036/1626-7) and his al-Fawāʾid al-Madaniyya, an allegiance to the “Akhbāriyya” was claimed by, or attributed to, numerous scholars, some of whom held high political office. Muḥsin Fayḍ al-Kāshānī (d.1091/1680) was, for a time, Friday Prayer leader of Isfahan; al-Ḥurr al-ʿĀmilī (d.1104/1693) was Shaykh al-Islam of Mashhad. Muḥammad Taqi al-Majlisī (d.1070/1660) was probably one of the most prominent of these high-profile “Akhbārī”, and is reported to have promoted a blend of Akhbarism and Sufism. In this paper, I explore his Akhbārī ideas through his Persian work of ḥadīth commentary Lawāmiʿ Ṣāhibqirānī – a translation and commentary upon the Man lā yaḥḍurhu al-faqīh by al-Shaykh al-Ṣadūq (d.381/991-2). The work is lengthy (8 volumes in its edited version), and in it, Taqī al-Majlisī outlines how the Akhbārī approach to jurisprudence can be applied to specific questions of Islamic law. The tinge of Sufi ideas does appear occasionally, but the critical question of the relationship between Akhbārī scripturalism and Sufi mysticism does not emerge as a central theme of the work. Nonetheless, there are insights into his methodology, and interesting asides on his supposed “Akhbārī” allegiance. I also allude to the differences between this Persian-language commentary and Taqī al-Majlisī’s Arabic-language commentary on another important ḥadīth collection – his Rawḍat al-Muttaqīn, a commentary on the Tahdhīb al-Aḥkām of al-Shaykh al-Ṭūsī (d.460/1067). The approach of the two works reveals different audiences, reflected in part by languages used. I also address whether these forms of “Akhbārī” commentary are carried over to Taqī al-Majlisī’s famous son, Muḥammad Bāqir al-Majlisī (d.1110/1699), and whether this helps us answer the fraught question of whether Bāqir al-Majlisī was, or was not, an Akhbārī.

Majid Montazer Mahdi (Institute of Ismaili Studies) Writing the Self into Tradition: al-Ḥurr al-ʿĀmilī and the Politics of Scholarly Memory 

This paper explores how Muḥammad b. Ḥasan al-Ḥurr al-ʿĀmilī (d. 1104/1693) used his biographical work Amal al-Āmil fī ʿulamāʾ Jabal ʿĀmil to inscribe himself within the dominant intellectual lineage of the seventeenth-century Shiʿi world—the “tradition of al-Shahīd II.” Far from being a neutral compendium of learned men, Amal al-Āmil is a self-conscious act of memory-making through which al-Ḥurr negotiated identity, legitimacy, and authority in a changing scholastic landscape.
The paper argues that al-Ḥurr’s project cannot be read simply as an expression of Akhbārī Thought. Through close textual analysis of the work’s prologue, sources, and organisation, I demonstrate that al-Ḥurr’s primary agenda was genealogical rather than doctrinal: he sought to position himself and his family within a transregional network of learning descending from Zayn al-Dīn al-ʿĀmilī (al-Shahīd II, d. 965/1557 or 966/1558), which I call the tradition of Shahid II. His selective inclusion of figures, careful ordering of entries, and rhetorical emphasis on scholarly descent collectively construct a portrait of continuity that privileges al-Shahīd II’s tradition as the locus of authenticity in Shiʿi scholarship. By treating Amal al-Āmil as both a literary artefact and a historiographical intervention, this paper situates al-Ḥurr within broader Safavid strategies of intellectual self-fashioning. It suggests that collective biography in this period functioned less as archival preservation than as ideological performance—a means of staking a claim to tradition in an environment where lineage equalled legitimacy. In re-reading al-Ḥurr’s work as a politics of remembrance, the paper sheds new light on how post-classical Shiʿi scholars wrote themselves into the very traditions they claimed merely to record.

Zahra Jafari (University of Exeter) Late Safavid Akhbārī Reorientation: Shaykh Yūsuf al-Baḥrānī’s Legal Legacy

Under the financial and ideological patronage of the Safavid monarchs, Shīʿī scholarship expanded markedly. This is evident in the migration of scholars from Bahrain, Lebanon, and Iraq to Iran, the rise in Shīʿī literary production, and the translation of doctrinal texts into Persian. In the 11th–12th/17th–18th centuries, the Akhbārī movement, rather than the Uṣūlī one, dominated Shīʿī doctrinal thought and became a defining feature of Safavid Iran’s final century. A key institution that enabled this rise was probably the Madrasa Manṣūriyya in Shiraz, founded before the Safavids by the philosopher Ṣadr al-Dīn Dashtakī (903/1498). Initially a centre for rational sciences, Manṣūriyya later became a major Akhbārī hub by hosting figures such as Sayyid Mājid al-Baḥrānī (d. 1028/1619), Muḥsin al-Fayḍ al-Kāshānī (d.1091/1680), and Sayyid Niʿmatullāh al-Jazāʾirī (d.1112/1700). In this paper, I examine the intellectual trajectory of the Akhbārī scholar Shaykh Yūsuf al-Baḥrānī (d. 1186/1772), associated with Manṣūriyya as its head and Friday prayer leader of Shiraz, to trace his shift from a rigid Akhbārī stance to a moderate one. The transformation is most visible in his 25-volume legal book, al-Ḥadāʾiq al-nāḍira fī aḥkām al-ʿitra al-ṭāhira. As the first Akhbārī work of analytical jurisprudence written in a style similar to that of the Uṣūlīs, the book is a major innovation in Akhbārī literature. Nevertheless, it preserves core Akhbārī fundamentals—above all, the primacy of akhbār as a source of law, and the rejection of ijtihād and uṣūl al-fiqh. By analysing al-Baḥrānī’s method in al-Ḥadāʾiq al-nāḍira, I argue that his moderate Akhbārī approach contributed to a post-Safavid reorientation of Akhbarism. Paradoxically, however, this change paved the way for the subsequent Uṣūlī dominance—an intellectual shift mirrored today in Manṣūriyya’s current function as a leading Uṣūlī seminary.

Lived Islam in Britain: Welfare, Solidarity, and Spiritual Experience (Room 216)

Chair: Haroon Sidat (Cardif University)

Hanan Basher (Cardiff University) Qur'anic Approaches to Spiritual Care by Muslim Chaplaincy in British Higher Education

Historically rooted in Christian traditions, chaplaincy has evolved into a multifaith practice within diverse institutional contexts. The growth of Britain’s Muslim population has generated demand for faith-sensitive services across sectors such as healthcare, prisons, the military, and community settings. Muslim chaplaincy remains an emergent field, with existing scholarship primarily focused on healthcare and prison contexts. Research into Muslim chaplaincy in higher education is therefore timely, offering insights that may inform strategies to enhance student experience—a priority within the increasingly competitive higher education landscape. My doctoral research examines the perceptions of Muslim chaplains in British higher education. It evaluates the extent to which they address the religious, spiritual, and mental health needs of students and staff. The study further examines the strategies employed in their support provision, the core responsibilities that define their role, and the contextual factors that shape their implementation. My presentation will highlight findings on the use of Qur’anic verses in spiritual care, a key component of the broader research question regarding chaplains’ approaches to fulfilling their institutional role. Additionally, I will provide an overview of emerging themes. The research adopts an empirical design, drawing on data from semi-structured interviews with 27 Muslim chaplains, both employed and voluntary, across British universities. Data analysis follows a thematic approach. The study is theoretically grounded in practical theology, which integrates theological principles with humanistic perspectives and social scientific methodologies to address lived realities. This research holds particular significance for Islamic Studies as it considers how Qur’anic scripture is operationalised within contemporary chaplaincy practice in higher education. By exploring the interpretive and pastoral use of Qur’anic verses, the study illuminates the dynamic interface between classical Islamic sources and modern institutional contexts. It contributes to understanding how Muslim chaplains negotiate theological authenticity while addressing diverse spiritual and mental health needs. Ultimately, the research seeks to advance understanding of how chaplaincy can serve as a bridge between faith, pastoral care, and holistic student support in contemporary higher education.

Muhammad Nabil (SOAS) Britain's First Muslim Burial Fund: Archival Narratives of Migration, Civil Society and Welfare 

This original research presents the first investigation of archival exploration of the Indigent Moslems' Burial Fund (IMBF) – Britain’s first-ever Muslim burial charity, established in the early 1900s to ensure dignified funerals for Muslims without next of kin, many of whom would otherwise receive pauper burials in mass graves. Drawing on archival materials from the East London Mosque (ELM) archives, including minute books, financial ledgers, handwritten correspondences, and burial records, this study situates early Muslim civil society initiatives within the broader socio-historical context of Muslim migration, welfare, and religious infrastructure in Britain. By as early as 1855, tens of thousands of lascars (seafarers) were arriving in Britain annually, many of whom lived in precarious conditions in the East End. Muslims, including the seamen, were observed amongst the disadvantaged and destitutes in the East End of London, many of whom “perished with cold and hunger in our streets during the [British] winter” (Salter 1873). Meanwhile, with the influx of Muslims (Evans 1985), Muslim mortuary needs led to the establishment of the “Mohammedan Cemetery” at Brookwood in 1884 (Geaves 1995; Ansari 2007), and later the Woking Muslim Military Cemetery to honour Muslim casualties in WWI (Ahmed 2014; Beebeejaun & Maddrell 2023). However, many indigent Muslims from the wandering populations would often end up in paupers’ graves, which prompted Muslim civil society leaders to join hands in creating the first-ever burial fund that demonstrated significant imperial-era patronage and transnational Muslim solidarities (Foreman 2011). In particular, archival evidence from as early as 1914 reveals the Fund’s evolution from elite-led philanthropy to grassroots stewardship, early Muslim civil society, including key individuals Sir Syed Ameer Ali, Khalid Sheldrake, donors and patrons of the fund across continents, such as Sir Sultan Mahomed Aga Khan, many Nizams, Princes, Kings, Nawabs, Kings and Caliphs from colonies across the Indian subcontinent and the Middle East, and important partners such as the London Necropolis Company. By foregrounding these archival fragments, this research reveals IMBF not as a merely charitable body but as a formative institution shaping Muslim identity and infrastructure in late 19th-century – early 20th-century Britain. It highlights how burial practices became spatial expressions of belonging and resilience, linking histories of migration, mosque-building, and minority rights. This research contributes to scholarship on diasporic religious practices, welfare histories, and the making of Muslim space in Britain.

Muthanna Saari (University of Sussex) Zakat and the moral economy: Ethic of care, social solidarity and the aspiration for a good life

This thesis seeks to examine the relationship between zakat practice and community building among Muslim communities in Birmingham, United Kingdom (UK). Muslims in Birmingham seek to build their community as they try to improve their overall condition and standing within British society. How people assume their responsibility towards their community could be explained by varying degrees of communal bonds, which determines social relationships. This sense of responsibility has invariably influenced Muslims’ giving attitudes, and the prevalent construction of Muslims in the UK as ethno-religious communities may reconfigure what community building means in these contexts. Within different Islamic traditions and contemporary Muslim societies, ongoing debates surrounding how, to whom and where zakat should be given have often reduced zakat to an individual practice focused primarily on compliance with religious rulings. People have been contemplating whether their zakat is worthier in regions where Muslims are in more grave situations or within their doorstep in the UK. This thesis, therefore, sets out to examine how zakat is viewed, understood, appreciated and practised among Muslim communities in Birmingham. Within this domain, the thesis explores the extent to which the multiplicity of Muslim communities in Birmingham leads to diverse interpretations and practices of zakat, potentially producing new realities of zakat practice in modern society. By studying the practice of zakat within contemporary British society—characterised by an established welfare system—this thesis explores the way in which Muslims perceive zakat in relation to state-provided social support. My argument is that Muslims in Birmingham, in carrying out this religious duty, connect zakat with the idea of community building, viewing it as a collective rather than an individual act in the pursuit of a good life. For them, zakat is a deeply moral practice embedded in the notion of the rights of recipients, guiding their behaviour and actions regarding wealth and responsibilities towards fellow community members. It is an expression of morality through an ethic of care for others, foregrounding community in this act of solidarity. Moreover, the aspiration for a good life—or baraka, a life blessed both materially and spiritually—serves as a key determinant of self-cultivation and solidarity in community building. In this respect, solidarity and care for others are reflected in how Muslims position themselves in society and engage in civic participation within the wider Muslim community.

Ruqaiah Al-Kabab (University of Salford) Young Arab Muslim Adults' Lived Spiritual Experience with Allah while studying in the UK: An integrated research methodology

In Islam, spiritualism is grounded in the relationship between the individual and Allah (Mohd Amin et al., 2018). Young Muslims are our future leaders, and the conservation of their spiritual life can guide others to remain on the right path and avoid falling in the wrong direction. This study argues that examining the spiritual experiences of young Arab Muslim adults is essential and highlights the critical roles of the researcher and the chosen methodology in ensuring the collection of accurate and authentic data. This study aimed to explore the spiritual experience of young Arab Muslims who have come to the UK to pursue their higher education, far away from their Muslim home and the impact of this relationship with Allah on them. Semi-structured, in-depth, bilingual interviews were conducted with 20 young Arab Muslim adults aged 18-25 who were studying at UK universities. Recognising the sensitivity of the topic, a novel research approach was employed, enabled by the researcher's Arab Muslim background, native Arabic language, shared international academic experience with the participants, and counselling skills. This phenomenological intersubjective integration facilitated access to sensitive data and enabled a deeper exploration of the participants' unique experiences. Then, to truly understand this spiritual phenomenon of these young adults, it was necessary to go beyond what is usually said. Therefore, in the current study, hermeneutic phenomenology was employed, as it provided the researcher with greater flexibility to analyse the data through both Islamic and cultural lenses. This approach enabled the interpretation of the data in a manner that yielded meaningful and insightful results. Three themes emerged from the analysis: 1) the importance of an integrated approach to research of Muslim spirituality; 2) the nature of the relationship between the young Arab Muslim adults and Allah has become stronger in the UK during the absence of their families; and 3) how this connection with their divinity has impacted their well-being and growth. These findings can contribute to addressing cultural considerations within the Muslim context and to exploring future directions for research in Islamic counselling and psychotherapy.

Gender, Power, and Interpretation in Islamic History and Thought (Room 220)

Chair: Karen Bauer (The Institute of Ismaili Studies) 

Majideh Qazizadeh (University of Exeter) Women, Myth, and the Gendering of Chess in Islamicate Literature

This paper examines the gendered dimensions of chess in the medieval Islamicate world by focusing on two interconnected themes. First, it explores the roles attributed to women in early Arabic and Persian mythic narratives, especially those concerning the invention of chess. I cite examples from Islamicate chess literature, such as the oldest extant Arabic chess manuscript, Kitāb al-Shaṭranj, preserved in an early 12th-century copy but drawing on material attributed to the eighth and ninth centuries scholars, including al-ʿAdlī and al-Sūlī. Although these texts situate the game’s origins in India, the specific stories found in Islamicate sources do not appear in surviving Indian literature. Their distinctively Islamicate forms suggest that these myths were shaped within medieval Islamic societies themselves and therefore reflect the attitudes of those societies toward wisdom, authority, and gender. Women in these narratives are frequently associated with counsel, foresight, or intellectual discernment. These representations can be contrasted with Sasanian Persian accounts of the invention of chess, in which women are entirely absent, emphasising that gendered framings of the game shifted across cultural and literary contexts.
Alongside this mythic material, the paper also engages with broader questions of gender and chess in medieval Islamicate scholarship. Scholars variously characterised the game as a masculine discipline associated with elite refinement and warriorship skills, or, conversely, as a feminine, sedentary pastime that contrasted with ideals of “manliness.” Taken together, these perspectives show that medieval understandings of chess were closely tied to cultural constructions of gender and to its manifestations in everyday social life.

Laila Halani (The Institute of Ismaili Studies) Female empowerment: 'Khoja' and Momin engagement with their Aga Khan III's vision as reflected in the community's Rules (1905-1950s) 

Much has been written about Aga Khan III’s role in championing female empowerment, particularly through promotion of female education. Less has been written about his advocacy for women’s rights with reference to personal law, civic engagement and economic independence, or the social development work he undertook in his role as a Muslim leader and the spiritual leader and guide of the Ismaili community. These efforts are well documented in his writings, speeches, and farmans. Far less is known of the community’s understanding, articulation, and implementation of his vision for female empowerment and women’s rights as reflected in the governance structures and regulations outlined in the formal 'Rules’ for the community. Drawing upon archival work, this research will review the Rules (the predecessors for the Universal Constitution for the community) for various parts of India and Africa under colonial rule to analyse Aga Khan III’s vision, and the community engagement with the vision. Falling within the larger theme of gender, while overlapping with other themes, this paper will offer an in-depth exploration and insights into the dialectical relationship between the vision, ideology and its translation as reflected in the Rules. This scope will also provide an opportunity to situate the ideology and its translation with reference to the wider context of colonial rule, mediation of community identity through colonial courts and law, and engagement of religious communities with modernisation, and the adaptation and transformation of this modernity, resulting in developments specific to Ismaili communities in British India. The content of Rules have not been analysed from a gendered perspective before and hence the paper will be a valuable contribution to an understudied part of Ismaili history.

Qudsia Mirza (University of East London) Beyond Text and Tradition: Women's Interpretive Interventions in Modern Islamic Law

The historical marginalisation of women from the interpretive and juridical processes of Islamic law marks somewhat of a rupture in the egalitarian ethos of early Islam. In the formative period of the Islamic tradition, women were active producers and transmitters of religious and legal knowledge. However, as legal authority became institutionalised through the classical schools of jurisprudence, women’s interpretive authority was systematically erased. This exclusion constituted both a legal and epistemic rupture - one that shaped the subsequent trajectory of Shari’a and solidified patriarchal readings as normative. This paper situates contemporary Islamic feminist scholarship within this history. It examines how such scholarship reclaims the notion of interpretive authority and deploys methodological approaches which seek to recover Islam’s egalitarian impulses. These feminist interventions do not merely seek reform within the law; they interrogate the very epistemological foundations upon which classical jurisprudence has been constructed. By exposing the historical contingencies of male authority in law-making, Islamic feminists introduce a new rupture - one that destabilises the patriarchal canon and reopens Shari’a to plural, inclusive readings.
Through an analysis of key contemporary texts, the paper argues that Islamic feminism represents both a continuation of early Islamic interpretive practices and a deliberate rupture from the gendered exclusions of legal history.

Transmission of Knowledge and Classifications of the Sciences Across Islamicate Cultures (Room 215)

Chair: Petra Schmidl (FAU Erlangen-Nuernberg) 

Godefroid de Callatay (UCLouvain) The Ikhwān al-Ṣafā’s classification of the sciences: an overview of its diffusion and reception over the ages and cultures

Recent scholarship on the Rasā’il Ikhwān al-Ṣafā’ reveals that the overall impact of this encyclopaedical compendium of philosophy was considerably larger than previously assumed. The authors’ original views on how to organize human knowledge are no exception. In this paper, I shall present various scientific taxonomies that were modelled on the Ikhwān, ranging from the tenth to the sixteenth centuries and in a wide range of cultures, milieux and languages. In support of my argumentation, I will be using M-Classi, an open-access digital tool currently being developed to store, search, compare and visualize the classifications of the sciences in pre-modern Islam. 

Laura Tribuzio (UC Louvain) Marks of Power, Traces of Knowledge: Ottoman Manuscripts of the Mujmal al-Ḥikma and the Brethren of Purity

The Mujmal al-Ḥikma, an anonymous Persian translation and abridgement of the Rasāʾil Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ, offers a unique lens on the transmission of philosophical and esoteric knowledge into Anatolia. Its earliest known manuscripts, Berlin 132 and Fatih 3178, both dating to the 13th century, set a firm terminus ante quem for the text’s composition. Berlin 132, copied in Sivas by al-Ḥusayn ibn Muḥammad ibn Ya‘qūb al-Turkmān, explicitly anchors the text in central Anatolia; alongside with Fatih 3178, transcribed by the Nakhchivan-born Ibn al-Khaffāf, they both bear the tughra of Bayezid II. A few other manuscripts of the Mujmal al-Ḥikma preserved in Turkey also carry Bayezid II’s tughra. In some cases, the same manuscript may present additional tughras, such as that of Mahmud I, alongside others from different sovereigns. These overlapping layers of ownership, together with marginalia, dedications, and colophons, enrich our understanding of the text’s material history and its integration into Ottoman manuscript culture. This paper will explore how these codicological traces, together with the textual tradition, allow us to follow the steps of the Brethren of Purity into Ottoman lands.

Ahmed Tahir Nur (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona) From Alexandria to Baghdad to Istanbul: Tracing an Influential Framing of Knowledge

In this paper, I follow the trajectory of an influential fourfold framing of knowledge from Alexandria to Baghdad to Istanbul. I show how Aristotle’s discussion of the relationship between (1) spoken sounds (2) written marks (3) affections of the soul (4) and actual things was turned into an influential fourfold framing of knowledge across languages and cultures. Philosophers such as Abū l-Barakāt al-Baghdādī (d. c. 560/1165) provided conceptual precedents to the Ottoman scholar Taşköprizade (d. 968/1561), who utilized this fourfold framing (khaṭṭ, lafẓ, dhihn, ‘ayn) to organize his Miftāḥ al-saʿāda (‘The Key to Felicity’), one of the most comprehensive encyclopedia of the sciences in Islamic intellectual history. I argue that Taşköprizade uses this fourfold framework to provide an ontologically grounded classification that considers both the philosophical and religious sciences as “the real sciences” (al-ʿulūm al-ḥaqīqiyya), thereby preserving their truth claims.

Razieh Mousavi (FAU Erlangen-Nuernberg) Unity in Diversity: Numbers and the Synthesis of Knowledge in a Safavid Classification of Sciences

This paper examines the substantial role that numerical symbolism plays in articulating and integrating diverse branches of knowledge in a Safavid multiple-text manuscript compiled in 1070/1660 by Mīrzā Ibrāhīm, a high-ranking Safavid official and intellectual. Studying his Lughaz-i marqūm (‘Nummerical Riddle’) indicates that Mīrzā Ibrāhīm sought to demonstrate the unity of knowledge (ʿilm) and the manifestation of unity in multiplicity through the language of numbers and the science of letter–number relations (ʿilm al-ḥurūf). Among its most striking features is a tabular classification of the sciences, where number–letter science is designated a derivative mathematical discipline. Through this classificatory scheme, Mīrzā Ibrāhīm constructs a universalist epistemology in which all branches of learning emanate from, and return to, the One. By analysing this table, the paper argues that Mīrzā Ibrāhīm’s integration of unity and plurality reflects a distinctive Safavid vision of knowledge as both hierarchical and harmonious, a worldview in which diversity becomes the very showcase of unity.

Beyond Historiography: Alternative Sources for Early and Medieval Islamic History (Room 221)

Chair: Adam Ramadhan (Leiden University)

Leone Pecorini Goodall (Leiden University) Identifying and investigating maternal kinship ties in Umayyad and Alid panegyric

Arabic poetry has long been viewed as a fundamental aspect of Arabian culture, from pre-Islamic to modern times. Similarly, genealogy, described by Ibn Hazm in the 11th century as “the science (ʿilm) of the Arabs” has served to determine identity, status and “Arabness”. These two pillars of Arabian culture have rarely been brought together despite poets regularly praising individuals via their genealogy and pedigree (nasab wa hasab) alternating paternal and maternal praise.
This paper will read early Islamic panegyric alongside genealogy to reveal the importance placed on maternal descent by poets, and in turn, how panegyric poetry was formulaic in its praise of maternal ancestors. It will primarily focus on poetry produced for the Umayyad Caliphs and the figures who would later be canonized as the Imamī twelver Imams to investigate the importance of their maternal kinship ties. First, mothers will be identified in the genealogical corpus, followed by the identification of their ancestors in praise poetry for their own children. This approach will demonstrate how sources, deprived of a historical narrative context elucidates the social and political history of early Islam. 

Aliya Abdulkadir Ali (University of Cambridge) Imagining and Erasing: Women’s Political Roles in Early Islamic Genealogical and Narrative Traditions

This paper uses prosopography and genealogical sources to recover the political roles of women in the first century of Islam, challenging their near absence from narrative histories of the early caliphate. It proposes a prosopographical approach to telling the story of the other half of the population whose political influence has been largely overlooked in conventional accounts. Narrative histories of the early Islamic period often present political development as an almost exclusively male process, with women appearing rarely and usually incidentally. By contrast, genealogical works such as al-Zubayrī’s Nasab Quraysh and al- Balādhurī’s Ansāb al-Ashrāf preserve a different historical record. These sources reveal women as central actors in the negotiation of power, forging, sustaining, and recalibrating alliances through marriage, divorce, and maternal lineage. Figures such as Umm Kulthūm bt. Faḍl b. ʿAbbās and ʿĀʾisha bt. Jarīr emerge not as passive extensions of male political strategies, but as participants whose decisions and networks shaped the political landscape of the early caliphate.
The paper explores the tension between women’s near-erasure in narrative historiography and their visibility within genealogical material. By comparing the minimisation of women’s political presence in chronicles with their sustained inclusion in genealogies, it argues that women’s participation was both acknowledged and suppressed, depending on genre and authorial intent. This duality complicates assumptions that Muslim women were politically marginal in the formative period of Islam. Finally, in dialogue with recent debates on race, orientalism, and temporality, the paper suggests that medieval patterns of remembering and forgetting women’s political roles continue to shape modern scholarly and cultural representations. It argues that genealogical sources not only offer alternative evidence for early Islamic history but also force a reconsideration of how Muslim women’s political significance has been constructed, obscured, and recovered across time.

Aslisho Qurboniev (Institute of Ismaili Studies) Using Fatimid ‘propaganda’ as a historical source

The early Fatimid state produced official historiography, state documents and pronouncements, legal texts, and biographies of important Fatimid men, which have been utilised by historians with caution, due to their tendentious nature. Yet, one set of texts, the so-called works of the daʿwa, and various texts that are understood as Fatimid propaganda, have been singled out as ‘useless’ in terms of their value as historical sources. Even al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s (d. 974) Kitāb al-majālis waʾl-musāyarāt, which purports to document the sayings, guidance, and various reactions of the imam-caliph al-Muʿizz li-din Allah (r. 953-975), based on witness accounts and written documents, did not escape this characterisation by early scholars of the Fatimids, and only recently been used by some to fill gaps in narrative sources and chronicles. This paper proposes that despite the peculiar structure and distinct objective of this source, on which historians still disagree, this source presents unique information and perspective from inner Fatimid circle, inaccessible to outsiders, and indispensable in understanding the power dynamic therein. I use both close reading and distant reading for a comparative analysis of the K. al-Majālis and another source from this period, the Sirat al-Ustādh Jawdhar of Abu Mansur al-Jawdhari.

Clement Salah (University of Oxford) Manuscripts and Mālikī Scholarship: The Kairouan Collection as an Alternative Source for Early Islamic History 

The manuscript collection of Kairouan stands among the most significant repositories for the history of early Islam, preserving some of the oldest extant Arabic literary manuscripts, dating as far back as the 3rd/9th century. As one of the principal centers of early Mālikism, Kairouan nurtured a vibrant scholarly community whose writings and transmissions are reflected in this corpus. Traditionally approached either as the remnants of a formal library, as a deposit akin to a Geniza, or as a collection of endowed codices, the collection has often been studied with an emphasis on its original constitution, modes of preservation, cataloguing practices, and eventual rediscovery. My contribution shifts the focus: rather than debating the institutional status of the collection, I propose to examine the ways in which it functioned as a vehicle for the preservation of non-discursive and alternative memory within the city’s Mālikī scholarly community between the 3rd/9th and 5th/11thcenturies. Through a combined institutional, social, intellectual, and material analysis, I argue that the practices of copying, selecting, and archiving operated as silent but powerful mechanisms of alternative memory—safeguarding strands of Mālikī scholarship largely absent from, or even suppressed within, the dominant historiographical record. The Kairouan manuscripts not only transmitted texts but also silently reconfigured the contours of Mālikī identity by preserving voices marginalized in later historiography, sustaining networks of transmission downplayed in narrative sources, and integrating early legal traditions from outside Ifrīqiyainto the local scholarly canon. By situating such patterns of preservation—of marginalized voices, neglected networks, and imported traditions—within the inventories of 1294 and 1930 and the surviving manuscripts, this paper highlights how the Kairouan collection materialized an alternative memory of Mālikī scholarship. More broadly, it invites us to rethink the role of pre-modern Islamic libraries as spaces where material practices shaped memory and scholarly tradition beyond explicit discourse.

East African Muslim sojourners in colonial Britain: Archaeology, anthropology and the (counter) archive of Bradford's 1904 Somali Village (ACR)

13.30-14.30: Lunch

14.30-16.00: Panel Session 2 

Ijtihād, Ethics, and Islamic Legal Theory Across Time (Room 219)

Chair: Mohammad Rasekh (Institute of Ismaili Studies) 

Muhammad Al-Marakeby (Max Planck Institute, Hamburg/The Indonesian International Islamic University) Islamic Ethics and Complicity in Times of War: Beyond the Legal Paradigm

This paper explores the problem of moral complicity in a world that is deeply interconnected and marked by war and genocide. The author argues that Islamic scholarship has often focused narrowly on legal responsibility, overlooking broader ethical dimensions of complicity. By framing the question primarily in juridical terms, who is legally liable, the ethical dimensions of structural participation in injustice are frequently left unaddressed. In response, this paper proposes an alternative framework rooted in Islamic ethical thought, drawing primarily on the ethical writings of Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī (d. 505/1111). It seeks to introduce a more comprehensive ethical understanding of complicity that goes beyond individual causality and incorporates structural and relational dimensions of moral responsibility. By highlighting the points at which al-Ghazālī departed from mainstream juristic rulings on this issue, the paper shows that his framework bears notable affinities with certain modern structuralist ethicists who have similarly sought to move beyond causal and individualist accounts of complicity. Yet what distinguishes al-Ghazālī’s view is that he sought to render his ethical vision practicable by introducing a nuanced gradation of ethical responsibility. Rather than maintaining a binary division between ethical and non-ethical acts, he proposed a hierarchical model of ethics in which varying degrees of responsibility correspond to different forms and levels of participation in wrongdoing. His approach thus proposes a middle path that remains relevant to our modern context—one that acknowledges the pervasive interconnectedness of human life while still preserving ethical accountability.

Ali-Reza Bhojani (University of Birmingham) Ijtihād and plurality: theorising difference from theology to law and ethics 

Theories of ijtihād in uṣūl al-fiqh, commonly framed through the debate between al-takhṭiʾa and al-taṣwīb (fallibility and infallibility), differ on whether the truth is always one or whether there are instances where every diligent effort could be considered correct. Various positions offered distinct normative accounts of legal plurality and, as recent scholarship has argued, enabled the ‘construction of competing orthodoxies’ among the theologian-jurists of the fourth–fifth/tenth–eleventh centuries (Qazwini, 2022). Concerns for maintaining immunity from error of either the community at large, the companions of the Prophet, or the family of the Prophet, informed a variety of positions across theological and legal school affiliation. Imāmī Shīʿī scholars, like certain Sunni traditionalists with whom they shared methodological commitments, including a critique of conjectural reasoning (ẓann), articulated a strong commitment to al-takhṭiʾa. For Imāmī scholars the Prophet and the Imams from His family were divinely inspired, free from error, and needed no recourse to ijtihād. That the Imamī position in works of uṣūl al-fiqh was driven by theological concerns is clear in the language of the statement on the school position by Shaykh al-Tusi (d. 460/1067) ‘The position of all of our masters of kalām.. is that the truth is one, and that there is evidence for it, whoever goes against it is mistaken and a fāsiq’. While Imāmī thinkers maintained a commitment to al-takhṭiʾa throughout the post-classical period, the meaning and function of this doctrine changed dramatically following the reconceptualisation of ijtihād in the seventh/thirteenth century. As ijtihād came to be embraced, ultimately becoming a defining feature of Twelver Shīʿī legal thought, the doctrine of fallibility opened space for new legal-theoretical structures. This paper traces the transformation of views on al-takhṭiʾa and al-taṣwīb in post-classical, early modern, and contemporary Imāmī uṣūl al-fiqh, showing how a doctrine originally rooted in theological concerns about divine guidance and error was redeployed to ground a range of substantive legal-theory positions, including the distinction between the real (wāqiʿī) and apparent (ẓāhirī) precepts (aḥkām). In doing so, the paper demonstrates the shifting nature of Imāmī uṣūl al-fiqh and argues that the theories of al-takhṭiʾa and al-taṣwīb, despite their sectarian origins, have conceptual resources for articulating a broader ethic of engagement across difference.

John Burden (University of Chicago) After Ijtihād: Imām al-Ḥaramayn al-Juwaynī and the Emergence of the Qāʿida Fiqhiyya 

What did it mean for medieval Muslim jurists to reason using a qāʿida fiqhiyya (legal maxim)? Modern scholars typically follow late-medieval jurists in portraying the qāʿida as a general rule induced from the madhhab’s (legal school) corpus juris – a device that helped jurists summarize doctrine, memorize the law, and guide decision-making in particular cases. Although the concept of the qāʿida did not emerge until the mid-eleventh century, they treat it as merely the manifestation of a legal technology jurists had used since the formation of Islamic law: the legal “principle,” “maxim,” or “canon of construction.” They therefore imply that the qāʿida emerged as the natural consequence of a universal legal phenomenon: principle-based reasoning. This leaves unaddressed a basic theoretical problem: how could Islamic law permit the use of general rules derived from the madhhab’s corpus juris when such reasoning appears to conflict with the imperative in uṣūl al-fiqh (Islamic legal theory) to derive rulings for new cases solely from revelation – the Qurʾān and Prophetic ḥadīth? This paper examines how jurists resolved the incongruity between qawāʿid-based reasoning and the epistemological constraints of uṣūl al-fiqh by turning to the work of Imām al-Ḥaramayn al-Juwaynī, the first jurist to deploy the qāʿida in a technical sense. Across his Ghiyāthī, Mughīth al-khalq, and Nihāyat al-maṭlab, Juwaynī presents the qawāʿid not merely as pedagogical aids but as mechanisms for extending the law to new cases when jurists were no longer able to interpret the revealed texts according to the dictates of uṣūl al-fiqh. As such, they form the basis of an alternative epistemology forged in response to a specific historical anxiety: the perceived loss of qualified mujtahids (independent jurists). Juwaynī justifies this epistemology by grounding it in continuity with Shāfiʿī’s method. For him, the qawāʿid represent those general logics Shāfiʿī had derived from the texts of revelation. To induce a qāʿida from the madhhab’s corpus juris, then, was simply to identify and extend the basis of Shāfiʿī’s reasoning, and thus preserve the legal import of revelation. Juwaynī’s work thus illuminates not only the preconditions for the emergence of the qawāʿid and their relationship to uṣūl al-fiqh, but also the broader conditions for the emergence of any new mode of juristic reasoning: it had to be framed as an act of continuity with the founder of the legal school. To use a qāʿida, then, was precisely to claim such continuity.

Alexandre Caeiro (Hamad Bin Khalifa University) Social Critique in Modern Hadith Commentary: A Study of the Doha Sharia Judge Aḥmad b. Ḥajar Āl Būṭāmī al-Bin‘alī’s 1981 Kabā’ir Text 

In 1981, the Doha Sharia Court judge Aḥmad b. Ḥajar Āl Būṭāmī al-Bin‘alī (1915-2002) wrote a treatise entitled Fī Taṭhīr al-Mujtama‘ min al-Kabā’ir comprising a list of eighty major sins (kabā’ir). The work partook in the author’s attempt to “reform society” and denounce “the heresy and misguidance that have become popular across the world.” The text was located within a well-established genre of hadith-based practical morality much prized by Salafis. The first kabā’ir lists started to circulated in the 3rd Hijri century. They became particularly popular in the Mamluk era, when some of its most famous texts were written. Āl Būṭāmī drew upon the kabā’ir lists of some of his predecessors: al-Dhahabī’s (d. 1347) Kitāb al-Kabā’ir, Ibn al-Nahhās’s (d. 1411) Tanbīh al-Ghāfilīn fī Maʿrifat al-Kabāʿir wa al-Ṣaghāʿir, Ibn Ḥajar al-Haytamī’s (d. 1566) Al-Zawājir ʿan Iqtirāf al-Kabāʾir, and Muhammad b. ‘Abd al-Wahhab’s (d. 1791) al-Kabā’ir. Āl Būṭāmī’s treatise confirms Joel Blecher’s suggestion that modern hadith commentary is often animated by “an impulse towards timeliness” which foregrounds social and political developments (Blecher 2018: 184). Āl Būṭāmī’s treatise participated in the sustained polemic that Qatar’s Wahhabi-leaning sharia judges engaged with the country’s youth in the aftermath of independence. The author did not engage in complex hermeneutical exercises nor in the pursuit of “interpretive excellences” (Blecher 2018: 15). Instead, the author reformulated the kabā’ir genre by relating sins to judicial practice; considering their political effects; decentering the sins of the heart and tongue; and avoiding theological questions. In this paper, I show how the treatise adapted individual vices (betrayal, gossip, bribery) to the institutions of the modern state; drew on a new documentary regime (passports, driving licenses, court rulings) to illustrate sinful practices; and critiqued on-going processes of cultural and legal transformation. Seen from Āl Būṭāmī’s perspective, modernization and oil wealth represented less new opportunity than wider social inequality, familial tension, and psychological anxiety. Although the treatise maps out the ideological fault lines of the era quite narrowly, it sheds light on an emerging sociology of religion, highlights tensions in Qatar’s developing legal structure, and offers a commentary on the changing boundaries of legitimate political criticism in the Gulf. The paper contributes to a better understanding of modern hadith commentary, sheds lights on the specific trajectory of the Islamic Revival in the Gulf, and provides a new window onto the diverse experiences of Arabian petro-modernity from the vantage point of its local actors.

Al-Bukhārī: Islam’s Foremost Traditionist (Room 221)

Chair: Rob Gleave (University of Exeter) 

Muḥammad ibn Ismāʿīl al-Bukhārī (d. 256/870) stands as one of the most distinguished figures in Islamic intellectual history. His magnum opus, the Ṣaḥīḥ, is revered as the most authoritative collection of Prophetic hadith and precedent in Sunni Islam and remains the most cited book in Islamic history. Al-Bukhārī’s legacy endures, shaping Islamic scholarship and devotion to this day. This panel proposes a focused scholarly discussion of Belal Alabbas's new book ‘Al-Bukhārī: Islam’s Foremost Traditionist’, which offers a comprehensive reassessment of one of the most influential figures in Islamic intellectual history. The panel will consist of three participants. 

Belal Alabbas (Cambridge Muslim College/University of Bristol) will present the central arguments, methodology and scholarly contributions of the book. This will be followed by comments from and a discussion with Professor Jon Hoover (Univerity of Nottingham) and Dr Omar Anchassi (University of Bern), each offering commentary on particular aspects of the work, such as its use of sources, historiographical approach, and most importantly, al-Bukhārī's legal and theological views. By combining an authorial overview with targeted scholarly responses, the panel is designed to foster sustained and critical engagement with the book and to situate it within broader debates in the field. It aims to appeal both to specialists in Islamic studies and to a wider academic audience interested in the development of religious authority, textual transmission, and scholarly traditions. The panel will prioritise discussion and exchange, contributing to a deeper understanding of al-Bukhārī’s legacy and his role as a theologian and a jurisprudent.

Infrastructures of Care, Charity and Constraint: Islamic Authority from the Humanitarian Sphere to the Household (Room 215)

Chair: Justin Jones (University of Oxford)

Emma Tomalin (University of Leeds) Beyond Tangibles: Muslim Local Faith Actors and the Intangible Work of Post-Conflict Development in Mindanao 

This paper examines the activities of Muslim local faith actors (LFAs), including faith-based organisations (FBOs), educators, ulama, and youth activists, in post-siege Mindanao in the southern Philippines. It draws on research conducted between 2023 and 2025 with LFAs working with displaced communities. Focusing on the period following the 2017 ISIS siege of Marawi, the paper treats this context not only as a case study but also as a basis for rethinking how Islam and development are typically conceptualised. Religion and development discourses tend to prioritise the “tangible” aspects of faith-based peacebuilding, often at the expense of its “intangible” dimensions. In Mindanao, these include the moral, spiritual, and relational aspects of the efforts of LFAs to sustain peace and development after violent conflict. Accordingly, participants did not primarily/only understand peace as institutional stability or adequate service provision, but rather as a lived ethical practice grounded in Islamic ideas of moral responsibility and outward struggle (jihad) against injustice, stigma, and social fragmentation. We argue that these often-overlooked intangible dimensions of peacebuilding, are central to post-conflict recovery. Our findings challenge secular biases in scholarship and call for greater analytical attention to forms of faith-based developmental peacebuilding that consider both intangible and tangible aspects.

Sandra Pertek (University of Birmingham) Developing Islamic ethico-legal framework toward women’s protection in forced displacement 

Forced displacement severely affects war-torn Muslim societies with many displacement emergencies becoming protracted. Forced displacement experiences are traumatic and gendered. Women are disproportionately subjected to a range of protection concerns and risks, socio-economic exclusion, and limited access to justice and services in armed conflicts and displacement and require integrated approaches to protect their dignity. This paper critically explores “How can Islamic law and ethics complement international law in strengthening displaced women’s protection?”. In doing so, it proposes an Islamic ethico-legal framework to address the traumatic and gendered experiences of cross-border and internal displacement. The framework combines Islamic principles of protection (Himāyah and Hurma), migration for safety (Hijra), guarantee of safety (Amān), non-refoulement and access to courts. The paper argues that Islamic ethico-legal framework offers a value-based approach as a viable alternative which can be adapted by Muslim humanitarian organisations in their policy and programmes. By drawing on historical examples and engaging Islamic ethics alongside international legal standards, the paper discusses contextually grounded approaches to uphold the dignity and rights of displaced women. It concludes with actionable recommendations to integrate Islamic principles into humanitarian action.

Muhammad Nabil (SOAS) British Muslim Charities: Contemporary Manifestations of Canons and Traditions 

As a minority group comprising many financially disadvantaged population clusters, British Muslims reportedly donated between £1.48 - £2.22 billion despite the cost-of-living crisis. Over decades, Islamic charitable work in Britain has grown from everyday relief to community-based social development and local institution-building, addressing the broader British society by reconciling religious obligations and progressive values. However, their role in British society is understudied - British sociologist Bryan S. Turner called for a research shift focusing on Muslim everyday lives through practices and institutions. I examine the underexplored historical evolution of Britain’s charitable infrastructure, shaped by medieval Christian traditions, that created an enabling setting to accommodate faith‑based charities, particularly those belonging to the Abrahamic faith. I aim to connect the growth of Muslim charitable institutions following mass immigration and their contemporary modalities with Islamic charitable history, traditions, and canonical narratives and imperatives. This demonstrates, firstly, how British Muslim communities in a culturally globalised setting alongside their Abrahamic counterparts may relive scriptural inspirations and historical traditions in redefining newer composite identities, and secondly, how this may offer a nuanced, perceptive and interwoven understanding of Muslim engagement with and contribution to the wider British society.

Muhammad Faisal Khalil (University of Oxford) Fractal Sovereignty and Rent Registers in the Muslim Household: Clerical Fief-holders from Marriage to Death

Is clerical authority over Muslim life durable in modernity, and if so, how? Faisal Devji’s ‘Waning Crescent’ suggests not: Islam becomes an impersonal global actor which eclipses clerics. Elizabeth Lhost’s ‘Everyday Islamic Law’ suggests yes: clerics persist through pluralist flexibility. I argue that both these interpretations err: the first in scale, rendering the domestic derivative; the second in valence, mistaking for liberation what enables extraction. Drawing on the Oxford-UNICEF research on religion and child marriage which I led, I show how clerical fief-holders (muftīs, qāzīs) maintain authority across the household life cycle. The arc of marriage (nikāḥ), birth (wilādat), and child-rearing (ḥizānat) operates through rent registers: administrative, epistemic, and ontological. They monetise access (rusūm), authorise proof (fatwā), and fix status (bāligh/nā-bāligh). They have maintained this jurisdiction despite interventions by legal, civil, and state institutions, shaping the categories of the legal subject around which these institutions function. Through a close reading tafsīr and fatāwā regarding marital consummation, I demonstrate how these registers scale from household to state, hardening into legal thresholds. Rather than asking how state and humanitarian frameworks shape religious practice, I ask how clerical intermediaries produce the definitions of personhood that those frameworks require. The household thereby functions as mass infrastructure for clerical authority.

Transregional Sufism: Ontology, Ritual, and Reform from the 13th Century to the Present (Room 220)

Chair: Walid Ghali (AKU-ISMC) 

Sepideh Afrashteh (Ryukoku University) The Ontology of the Human Being in Rūmī’s Mathnawī in Light of Ibn ʿArabī’s Metaphysical Thought 

This study examines the ontology of the human being in Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī’s Mathnawī through a close reading informed by selected themes from Ibn ʿArabī’s thought, without seeking to confirm or deny any direct historical or intellectual influence between the two figures. Situated at the intersection of Sufi poetry and Islamic theoretical mysticism, it adopts a comparative and hermeneutical reading in which Ibn ʿArabī’s key concepts clarify how Rūmī articulates the structure and meaning of human existence. Focusing on selected passages from the Mathnawī, the study analyzes five interrelated dimensions of human existence: the body (jism, badan, tan), spirit (jān, rūḥ), heart (qalb, del), self (nafs), and intellect (ʿaql). As articulated by Ibn ʿArabī, Rūmī depicts the human being not merely as a passive recipient of divine reality, but as an active, integrative locus where multiple levels of existence are simultaneously reflected and transformed, together configuring the human as a site situated between material limitation and openness to transcendence. Corporeality anchors human existence in finitude and multiplicity, while the spirit points beyond the material domain. The self undergoes progressive refinement through successive stages of transformation, enabling receptivity to higher forms of awareness. The heart functions as the locus of intuitive perception, while the intellect—particularly in its illumined and universal form—mediates between discursive reasoning and direct insight. The paper further examines Rūmī’s poetic narrative of human creation—from formation out of dust to the prostration of the angels—as an expression of the human being’s distinct rank. Read in light of key concepts from Ibn ʿArabī’s anthropology, this narrative illustrates the human being’s capacity to gather and reflect multiple levels of reality within a single locus of existence. The study argues that, within this framework, the human emerges as a “mirror of existence,” not a passive reflector of divine reality, but an active site where the meanings of being are disclosed through embodiment, transformation, and awareness. By foregrounding these dimensions, the study contends that the Mathnawī should not be read solely as ethical instruction or lyrical expression. Rather, it functions as a poetic medium for reflection on the nature of being, in which metaphysical insight is articulated through symbolic and imaginal language. This reading contributes to a more precise understanding of Sufi anthropology and highlights the human being as a central locus of meaning and manifestation within classical Sufi poetry.

Fitzroy Morrissey (University of Oxford) Ibn ʿArabī’s treatment of samāʿ in al-Futūḥāt al-makkiyyah 

Ibn ʿArabī’s (d. 638/1240) attitude to music is famously ambivalent, perhaps even negative. According to Carl Ernst, “Ibn ‘Arabi was highly critical of those who thought that mysticism was nothing but enjoyment of music” (Ernst 1997, 183). In Rūḥ al-quds, an epistle to his Tunisian friend ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Mahdawī (d. 621/1224), he laments the prevalence of Sufi musical audition (samāʿ) in the Islamic East and declares that it is necessary for the mystic who has verified the truth (muḥaqqiq) “not to agree with samāʿ and to completely disassociate from its practice” (Mangera 2005). This stance on samāʿ is developed in chapters 182 and 183 of Ibn ‘Arabī’s magnum opus, al-Futūḥāt al-makkiyyah. Coming at the end of a long section on the stations (maqāmāt) of the Sufi path, these chapters are devoted, respectively, to the mystical concert and abandoning it (tark al-samāʿ). In this talk, I will analyze Ibn ‘Arabī’s treatment of samāʿ in these two chapters, setting it in the context of his wider thought and earlier Sufi treatments of the topic. The presentation will consider the two typologies of samāʿ that Ibn ‘Arabī puts forward in these chapters — namely, his distinction between “unrestricted” (muṭlaq) and “restricted” (muqayyad) audition, and his classification of audition as “divine” (ilāhī), “spiritual” (rūḥī), and “natural” (ṭabīʿī) — showing how these typologies are connected to Ibn ‘Arabī’s metaphysics of universal theophany, his particular conception of God’s creative speech, and his controversial theory of “general prophethood” (nubuwwah ʿāmmah). I will also consider Ibn ʿArabī’s treatment of the legal status of Sufi music, contextualising it in relation to the treatment of that question in the classical Sufi manuals and works of Ẓāhirī and Mālikī fiqh. I suggest that his position in chapter 183 of the Futūḥāt is less restrictive than what we find in Rūḥ al-quds, and that it reflects his commitment to the strand of traditionalist jurisprudence within Sufism recently analysed by Samer Dajani (Dajani 2022). Overall, I argue, Ibn ʿArabī develops an ambivalent attitude towards music that is found within classical Sufism and, as is typical of him, sets it on a metaphysical foundation.

Sheridan Polinsky (Tubingen University) Apocalypticism in Contemporary Indonesia: The Rise and Fall of Muhammad Efendi Sa'ad and the Tareket al-Mu'min 

The Tareket al-Mu'min is an Indonesian Sufi order based in Pontianak, West Kalimantan with branches throughout the archipelago. For a number of years, its leader, Muhammad Efendi Sa‘ad, has declared himself the awaited messiah (Mahdi) and the recipient of a new revelation, the Risalah Kalam, on par with the Quran, claims that recently brought him into conflict with local religious authorities. This paper will chronicle the story of Sa‘ad and his movement, from its beginnings as a conventional Sufi order to its transformation into a controversial apocalyptic group. Focusing on both his own account of the spiritual process he underwent to become the Mahdi and his scripture, I will argue that his movement represents a unique form of Indonesian messianism that incorporates traditional elements of Javanese tradition. I will demonstrate that while the scripture consists largely of moral exhortation common in Islamic and Sufi literature, it is distinguished by its marked attempt to generate and inculcate a sense of identity in the followers of Sa‘ad as the “true believers” and the loyal disciples of the Mahdi. I will conclude with a survey of the response of the Indonesian Council of Muslim Scholars (MUI), suggesting that their fatwa for Sa‘ad to renounce his teachings reveals the continued strength and effectiveness of the Indonesian mechanism for addressing perceived violations of Islamic norms.

New Approaches to Shiʿi Hadith (ACR)

Chair: George Warner (Institute of Ismaili Studies)

Zarangez Karimova (Institute of Ismaili Studies) Conceptualizing Taqiyya in Safavid Hadith Commentary: An Inquiry into Fayḍ Kāshānī's Hermeneutics 

This paper examines the unique intellectual synthesis of the Safavid-era scholar Muḥammad ibn Murtaḍā al-Fayḍ al-Kāshānī (d. 1091/1680) as manifested in his major hadith compendium, al-Wāfī. Though Fayḍ’s role in mystical philosophy has long been recognised, in this paper it will be shown how his interdisciplinary orientation influentially shaped his approach to hadith. The paper will focus on Fayḍ al-Kāshānī's commentaries within al-Wāfī. It is here, through his strategic engagements with hadith selection and marginal glosses, that Fayḍ's distinctive integration of theology, philosophy and mysticism becomes manifest. While maintaining formal adherence to the text's juristic framework, these commentaries reveal his creative negotiation of Safavid epistemic hierarchies - simultaneously upholding orthodox structures while subtly expanding their interpretive possibilities. This careful balancing act demonstrates how Fayḍ transformed the ostensibly traditionist genre of hadith commentary into a vehicle for disciplined interdisciplinary synthesis. Specifically, the paper will explore Fayḍ’s conceptualization of taqiyya (cautionary dissimulation), examining whether this reinforces or resists the broader trend of redefining taqiyya from a comprehensive esoteric discipline into a circumscribed juridical sanction. The analysis will consider 1) the arrangement and categorization of traditions on taqiyya; 2) Fayḍ’s principles of selection and omission among conflicting narratives; and 3) the interpretive framework evident in his commentaries.

Stephen Burge (Institute of Ismaili Studies) Fasting in al-Kulaynī’s Furūʿ al-Kāfī: A Structural Analysis 

Al-Kulaynī’s (d. 329/941) al-Kāfī has received relatively little scholarly attention, with most scholarship focused on its opening section (the Uṣūl al-Kāfī), which deals with matters of theology and the role of the imams. There is, however, more to al-Kulaynī’s collection than this opening section, with the legal section (the Furūʿ al-Kāfi), forming the vast majority of the work. This paper will provide an analysis of al-Kulaynī’s K. al-Ṣawm, seeking to understand how al-Kulaynī compiled the material and what ideas and discourses he may be seeking to articulate through its compilation. In the K. al-Ṭahāra it has been noted that al-Kulaynī arranges in the material in a logical manner, beginning with maters of purity that are most likely to be encountered (e.g. daily encounters with impurity, such as urination) to those that are least likely to be encountered, if ever (e.g. what to do if a snake enters water being used for wuḍūʿ). Adopting the methods of compilation criticism, this paper will analyse the K. al-Ṣawm in a similar structuralist manner, exploring how al-Kulaynī arranges the material, seeking to deepen our understanding of how al-Kulaynī worked as a scholar and which ideas he sought to emphasise.

Hasan Al-Khoee (Institute of Ismaili Studies) The Traditions of the Imams as Historiographical Correctives in Early Shiʿi Literature 

It is well-known that by the 3rd/9th century, there was disagreement within the Muslim tradition regarding the precise history of events that followed the century after the death of the Prophet Muhammad in 11/632. Beyond typical historiographical disputes about causation, chronology or context, such disagreements included questions concerning the identities of participants, their motivations or allegiances, and elements of individual biography including marital ties. Such arguments became especially acute when bearing on broader claims of legitimate authority. This paper demonstrates that within Muslim historiographical discourses, a marked feature of early Shiʿi hadith texts was the transmission of authoritative statements attributed to the Shīʿī Imams addressing contested historical details. Analysing traditions attributed to Imam Muḥammad al-Bāqir and the Imam Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq transmitted by al-Kulaynī [d. c. 329/940-941] and al-Shaykh al-Ṣadūq [d. 381/991], it shows how, alongside transmitting historical narratives, the traditions of the Imams provided authoritative correctives on critical points of dispute, including on events in Kufa during the second fitna [c. 60-73/680-692] as well as marriage ties of the individuals from the Prophet’s family. Alongside doctrine and law, the texts are positioned as being similarly concerned with the collective history of the community.

George Warner (Institute of Ismaili Studies) ‘Our Speech Is Difficult’: Conceptualising the Speech of ʿAlī in Early Commentaries on Nahj al-balāgha 

The first extant commentaries on Nahj al-balāgha, authored both by Twelver Shiʿis and by Sunnis in the sixth/twelfth century, already contain what has remained a standard exaltation of its contents: that the quality of ʿAlī’s speech is beneath that of God and the Prophet, but above the rest of humanity. Familiar though it is, this definition disrupts usual conceptions of Prophetic and Imamic speech; typically, Twelver Shiʿis admit no probative distinction between the speech of different imams, while Sunnis refuse ʿAlī any substantial primacy above other companions. This paper will examine the four earliest surviving commentaries on Nahj, to examine how they articulate their authors’ understandings of ʿAlī’s speech, and how Nahj’s status evolved in parallel as a definitive collection of that speech. The analysis will have two core components: first, a comparison between the commentaries’ introductions as definitive framings of ʿAlī’s speech, alongside select texts within Nahj, analysing commentators’ direct categorisations of the speech of ʿAlī and how these are reflected in their explications of his words; second, comparison between these commentaries and the broader proliferation of collections and interpretations of ʿAlī’s speech in the eastern Seljuq milieu during this period.

16.00-16.30: Refreshments

16.30-18.00: Panel Session 3 

Beyond Boundaries: Examining Cross-Communal Interactions in Early and Medieval Islam (ACR)

Chair: Leone Pecorini Goodall (Leiden University)

Kyle Longworth (Leiden University) Does Class Transcend Community? The Economic Backgrounds of Muslim and Non-Muslim Administrators during the Umayyad Caliphate (ca. 661–750) 

Scholars have long acknowledged the prevalence of non-Muslim and non-Arab administrators staffing various levels of the early Islamic bureaucracy. Scholarship has often framed this employment as exploitation, irreverence, or efficiency; more recently, however, Nancy Khalek and Luke Yarbrough have advanced the field by foregrounding the social and political mileux of those debating the permissibility of employing members outside the Muslim religious community within the Islamic administration. Nevertheless, I suggest that prioritizing the religious identity of administrators has caused scholarship to underappreciate the significance of these intercommunal relationships for understanding class in the early Islamic period. Drawing on biographical dictionaries to reconstruct the social and economic backgrounds of administrators, I argue that non-Muslim administrators were descendants of the pre-Islamic elite who, while remaining non-Muslim confessionally, continued to be influential members of early Islamic society. Thus, the intercommunal character of the early Islamic administration was not a product of ecumenical cooperation or subaltern exploitation; rather, the makeup of the administration offers a valuable window into how economic and political interests shaped group formation during the transition from the late antique to early medieval Middle East.

Adam Ramadhan (Leiden University) Congregational Prayer and Communal Boundaries in the Early Imāmī Community 

Yi-Chia Chang (University of Edinburgh) Crossing Communal Knowledge Boundaries: The Transmission and Reception of Yaḥyā b. Sallām al-Baṣrī’s Tafsīr in the Early Islamic West

Clara Pitocchi (University of Oxford) Legal Confusion or Legal Pluralism? A Draft Inheritance Query to Muslim Jurists from the Cairo Geniza 

This paper examines a fragmentary Arabic draft from the Cairo Geniza (T-S 12.799) that takes the form of an istiftāʾ addressed to Muslim jurists concerning a complex inheritance case. Written in Islamic legal idiom, the document breaks off mid-question, leaves much of the page blank, and was later reused for Hebrew liturgical writing. Rather than reading this uncertainty as individual confusion or ignorance of Islamic law, the paper argues that it reflects the practical effects of legal pluralism in Fatimid Egypt. Inheritance was among the most technically demanding areas of Islamic law, and in Fustat litigants had to navigate overlapping Mālikī and Ismāʿīlī doctrines alongside local judicial discretion. A configuration involving a wife, sisters of different kinship status, and a slave-woman was sufficiently complex to generate uncertainty about which heirs qualified as Qurʾānic sharers in practice. The mention of personal names, whose roles remain unclear in the fragment, nevertheless points to concern over authority and jurisdiction rather than doctrinal disagreement. The document’s unfinished state and later reuse identify it as a discarded working draft, capturing a moment of legal hesitation before formal consultation and showing how uncertainty was produced within Islamic legal practice itself.

Islam, Knowledge, and Narrative in Contemporary Culture (Room 220)

Chair: Uzair Ibrahim (University of Exeter) 

Silke Ackermann (Oxford University, History of Science Museum) What do we mean by "Islamic Science" in Museums? 

Labels and categorisations are used with the purpose of making matters more comprehensible in both museum environments and academic studies. However, as Francis Bacon said, sometimes the remedy is worse than the disease. This may be particularly valid when it comes to the concept of ‘Islamic science’. The term may appear inclusive and right to the point, but what is truly understood by our audiences? What do we tacitly assume and which damage do unshared assumptions do? And does using different terms, such as 'Islamicate science' really makes a difference in the public understanding of the topics we are discussing? So, in a broader sense what would make science ‘Islamic’ or 'Islamicate'? This talk argues that understanding the association of knowledge accumulated and produced in different regions and periods could reveal the proper assessment of the development of scientific knowledge which is universal in nature:- 'label' less to say more.

Jonas Otterbeck (Aga Khan University, ISMC) Cubism is Divine: Rasheed Araeen's universalism and rebuttal of Eurocentric art history 

This paper discusses the UK based artist and writer Rasheed Araeen’s claim that Islam is at the heart of modernism by consulting his art, writing, and himself. There is no ambition to pass judgement on the soundness of his ideas. Rather, the chapter demonstrates how his intellectual project explains his relation to Islam at different times of his long career. Rasheed Araeen mobilizes Islam, Islamic semiotic resources, and Muslim identities for three main reasons: first, to mirror how racism others Muslims simultaneously as well as identities such as Arab, Pakistani, Indian; second, to draw parallels between modernism, minimalism, cubism, and Islamic art in a criticism of Eurocentrism; third, to include a particular understanding of the ethical as well as the aesthetical traditions of Islam in a universalist, modernist project meant to efface tribalism and Eurocentrism. His use of Islam, Muslim identities, and Islamic semiotic resources only fully makes sense in relation to Rasheed Araeen’s lifelong project that sees modernism as the platform for universal equality. The research is part of a project with the overall aim to investigate how aesthetics and ethics of Islam are reimagined by individual artists in relation to non-traditional art forms.

Laura Peh (Cinnamon Art Publishing) Muslim Representation in Children's Picture Books: Identity and Islamophobia 

Studies have shown that prejudice stems from nurture - our home, school and community - and are shaped by narratives we encounter growing up. Prompted by the September 11 attacks and throughout the course of the ongoing war in Gaza, Western media coverage has dominated English-language media outlets, with a focused political agenda including, but not limited to, perpetuating Islamophobia. Promoting ethnic hatred through printed matter is not a recent phenomenon, given that picture books published in German, in Germany, during the Nazi era between 1933 and 1945 were produced as propaganda to promote political ideology of the state and instill anti-semitism in children - with these books also used as evidence in the Nuremberg Trials. Since the 1960s, the state of Israel has published picture books in Hebrew with the objective of shaping young Israeli children with Zionist racial, nationalist and class-based ideologies, as well as justifying their war and campaign of extermination. This fact has been analysed by Israeli scholars researching Hebrew children’s books published in Israel between 1967 and 1985, finding more than 500 books that contained degrading descriptions of Palestinians and Muslims. Over the last 15 years, particularly in the US, picture books containing Muslim representation have been contested and withdrawn from school curriculum and public libraries, not challenged by librarians but from parents and the local community. A literature review of Muslim representation in children’s books reveals a lack of background information on Islamic identity and Arabic terms, important in providing understanding for a non-Muslim reader. Islamophobia. To what extent do children’s picture books influence the perspectives of readers?

Reconfiguring “Reality”, Authority, and Political Theology in Contemporary Muslim Thought: Fiqh al-Wāqiʿ, Post-Salafism, and the Politics of Islamic Renewal (Room 221)

Chair: Besnik Sinani (Tubingen University) 

Besnik Sinani (Tubingen University) Post-Salafism: Religious Revisionism and Political Transformation in Contemporary Muslim Thought 

This paper theorizes “post-Salafism” as a historically contingent transformation of Salafi authority, discourse, and institutions in contemporary Muslim societies, with Saudi Arabia as the key analytical site given its role in financing, exporting, and standardizing global Salafism. It argues that post-Salafism is not a single trajectory but a cluster of shifts: the fragmentation of Salafi religious authority after the passing of late twentieth-century “unifying” figures; the softening of sectarian boundary-making in response to reputational damage associated with militancy; tactical alliances with non-Salafi Muslims that unsettle claims of doctrinal superiority; and a partial “indigenization” of Salafi projects under local political and social constraints. In the Saudi case, these dynamics intersect with post-Islamist patterns generated by the rise, repression, and strategic adaptation of the Islamic Awakening, and with state efforts to recalibrate religion’s public role through securitized governance, nationalist narrative construction, and the regulation of fatwa production. The article traces Saudi policy shifts since the 1990s, shaped by domestic contestation, the post-9/11 landscape, the challenge of al-Qaʿida and ISIS, and intensified state control over religious institutions, and have produced both an authoritative void and a new ecology of permissible critique. Within this ecology, internal revisionists like Ḥātim al-ʿAwnī emerge as pivotal figures: operating from within Salafi institutions, they redeploy classical sources widely accepted in Salafi epistemic culture to critique central dogmatic mechanisms, and to propose a post-sectarian recalibration of Salafi discourse. The article’s central contribution is to conceptualize Saudi post-Salafism at the intersection of (1) state-led reconfiguration of religious governance, (2) changing public sensibilities toward Islamist moral regulation, and (3) internal doctrinal contradictions exposed by militant appropriations of Salafi repertoires. It concludes that post-Salafism is best understood as “defanged” rather than dethroned: socially curtailed, institutionally managed, yet still doctrinally resilient—thus reshaping, but not dissolving, Salafism’s global futures.

Rezart Beka (Hamad Bin Khalifa University) Theorizing Reality in Contemporary Islamic Thought: The Case of Scholars of Fiqh al-Wāqiʿ 

This paper examines how contemporary Muslim scholars have theorized “reality” (al-wāqiʿ) within the discourse of fiqh al-wāqiʿ (jurisprudence of reality), a concept widely promoted as a key instrument for Islamic renewal in modern contexts. Proponents argue that an accurate understanding of contextual reality is indispensable for developing a jurisprudence capable of responding to the social, political, and moral complexities faced by contemporary Muslim societies. The study analyzes how leading figures associated with fiqh al-wāqiʿ—most notably Yūsuf al-Qaraḍāwī, Nāṣir al-ʿUmar, and ʿAbdallāh Bin Bayyah—conceptualize al-wāqiʿ and how their approaches relate to, diverge from, or selectively appropriate classical Islamic theological and epistemological reflections on al-ḥaqīqa (reality).
By situating contemporary discussions within the broader intellectual history of Islamic theology, the paper argues that scholars of fiqh al-wāqiʿ depart significantly from classical engagements with reality, which were deeply concerned with metaphysical, ontological, and epistemological questions. Instead, contemporary treatments tend to instrumentalize reality in ways that serve pragmatic, legal, or political objectives. Many proponents implicitly adopt forms of direct or naïve realism, assuming an unmediated correspondence between perception and reality, thereby moving away from the representational realism that characterized much of the classical theological tradition. The paper identifies four dominant approaches to fiqh al-wāqiʿ—theological, reformist, political, and legal—and provides a comparative analysis of their methodological assumptions, normative aims, and discursive strategies. It further demonstrates how these approaches are shaped by specific socio-political contexts, including post-colonial state formation, the rise of political Islam, and the global war on terror. By critically assessing how “reality” is theorized and mobilized in contemporary Islamic thought, the study contributes to a deeper understanding of the epistemological stakes of Islamic renewal discourses and the tensions between tradition, pragmatism, and power in modern jurisprudential reasoning.

Ermin Sinanovic (Shenandoah University) Embedded Islamism: Evidence from Southeast Asia

The paper introduces the idea of embedded Islamism to challenge the common claim that Islamism has entered a “post-Islamist” phase. Islamism is not fading away or giving way to more secular or technocratic politics. Instead, in countries like Malaysia and Indonesia, Islamism has become part of the state’s daily operations. Islamist ideas now shape law, public administration, moral regulation, and development policy—mainly through ministries, courts, educational systems, and bureaucratic routines, rather than mass movements or Islamist parties. Governments now rely on Islamic references to define social order, public virtue, national identity, and political legitimacy. From this perspective, what many call post-Islamism is actually a shift in where and how Islamism works: it has moved from the streets into the state, and from open ideological struggle to everyday institutional practice. By showing how governing structures have normalized Islamist norms, embedded Islamism reveals just how durable and adaptable political Islam remains in Southeast Asia—even when elections are volatile, coalitions shift, or ideologies appear to moderate.

Towards a “Barbados-to-Bengal” Complex? Rethinking the Scales of Global Islam through Latin America and the Caribbean (Room 219)

Chair: Ken Chitwood (Universität Bayreuth)

This roundtable proposes a “Barbados-to-Bengal Complex” as both an extension and critique of Shahab Ahmed’s  “Balkans-to-Bengal Complex.” Ahmed mapped a vast post-Mongol, Afro-Eurasian zone—stretching from Southeast Europe through Anatolia, Iran, Central Asia, and the Indian subcontinent—held together by shared concepts, Sufi-inflected practices, circulating texts, and entangled histories. While his formulation, which foregrounded the movement of people, ideas, texts, and devotional forms, challenged Eurocentric divisions and disciplinary silos, its geographic concentration inadvertently reinforced the marginalization of histories and contemporary formations beyond Afro-Eurasia. Specifically, this roundtable discusses an agenda for theorizing global Islam in ways that are not merely geographically expanded but conceptually re-scaled. It positions the Americas as integral, rather than peripheral, to understanding Islamic belonging, circulation, and religious formation in a globalised world. 

Participants:

Kholoud Al-Ajarma (University of Edinburgh)

Ken Chitwood (Universität Bayreuth)

Mark Lindley-Highfield of Ballumbie Castle (University of the Highlands and Islands, Inverness) 

Negotiating Muslimness: Gender, Law, Media, and Power in Global Context (Room 215)

Chair: Aneeq Ejaz (University of Texas at Austin) 

Leif Stenberg (Aga Khan University ISMC) Spaces of Muslimness and Political Connections: Female Footballers in Saudi Arabia 

This paper is studying the current female football. The popular global sport in Saudi Arabia has established itself as a profitable industry, and women’s football league was allowed to attend in 2017. The sport has become an arena for politics, soft power, sportswashing, female empowerment, and the symbolic construction of cultural and religious belonging, whether inclusive or exclusive.
The aim in this paper is to scrutinise the lens on how female footballing manifests social, cultural, religious, and political modes and expressions. Saudi Arabia are no exception to this, rather the opposite. However, the histories of women’s football in Middle Eastern countries are not overlapping – Saudi Arabia has its own history concerning the relationship between football, sport and Islam.
A key question is how female footballers are defined within spaces of politics, nationalism and Muslimness. The idea of a floating term ‘Muslimness’ is connected to the football spaces created through the versions of Muslim Islams and combined with the conceptions of Muslim identities. Many Muslims are producing a version of Islam, and active Muslims, representing various movements, are driven by the need and expressions in the interpretation of the women footballers’ practice of Islam. In sum, the aim is to account for complexity, demonstrating how football functions as a window for examining interpretations of Islam and politics. Interpretations concerning women and the practice of Islam, is important, and the role of women’s football is shifting the discourse on Islam. In general, the response from fans, clubs, players and the public when they articulate an Islamic identity also impacts on how the religion is practiced.

Sumeera Hassan (University of Helsinki) Scripturalist Micro-Authority Online: Clip Culture and the Negotiation of Kinship Ethics in the Finnish-Pakistani Diaspora

This paper examines how Pakistani social media religious micro-authorities reconfigure gender and kinship ethics by recoding everyday marital conflicts as questions of scriptural legitimacy. Focusing primarily on Engineer Muhammad Ali Mirza’s post-sectarian scripturalism, which circulates widely through YouTube clip culture and cross-platform re-uploads, and drawing selective comparison with the popular exegetical style associated with Nouman Ali Khan, I analyse how platformed preaching reframes South Asian marriage norms through a recurring opposition between Qur’an and Hadith-centred authenticity claims and rasm or rasūm, meaning customary practice. Central to this discourse is the contestation of kinship hierarchies that frequently structure marital life, including the moral prioritisation of parents over spouses, the authority of the sasurāl (in-laws’ household) over the conjugal unit, and the gendered expectation that women absorb emotional and domestic labour to sustain extended family cohesion. Methodologically, the paper uses a multi-sited qualitative design combining discourse analysis of a curated corpus of high-circulation short clips and their uptake in comment threads with semi-structured interviews with two interconnected publics, namely Pakistani women living in Finland and Pakistani women active in the Facebook advice community Ask the Village. This paired interview strategy enables comparison between diasporic household realities, often organised around nuclear living yet shaped by transnational moral economies of obligation, and a platformed sisterhood environment where claims about Islam, culture, and women’s rights are debated, curated, and made actionable. I argue that mediated micro-authority operates less as formal fatwa-giving than as an everyday jurisprudence of marriage, understood here as a portable repertoire of textual claims that can be clipped, forwarded, captioned, and redeployed in domestic negotiations. Across both sites, women’s engagement with short-form proofs constitutes gendered digital religious labour that involves selecting, translating, contextualising, and circulating content to legitimise boundaries with in-laws, articulate spousal primacy, and negotiate domestic autonomy while maintaining Islamic identification. Rather than treating online Islam as representation, the paper shows how digital authority becomes a practical technology of household governance, enabling a form of discursive unbinding in which religious belonging is partially and unevenly separated from patriarchal kinship regimes. In doing so, the paper contributes to debates in Islamic Studies on religious authority, gender, media, and the lives of Muslim minorities in Europe.

Gianluca Parolin (Aga Khan University, ISMC) Nitṭallaʾ? Redefining Agency in Divorce on Egyptian Screens: Intersections of Gender and Class in Islamic Law and the Humanities 

As consumers of Egyptian TV series know all too well, divorce is an almost unavoidable fixture of television drama. The portrayal of divorce in these series vary widely, from highlighting dramatic climaxes to examining causes and consequences of divorce for the characters involved (Sābiʿ Ǧār, 2017-2018; Liʿbat Newton, 2021; Amal Fātin Ḥarbī, 2022). Just as Egyptian courts insist that divorce regulations are gender-specific and class-neutral (Welchman 2007, Sonneveld 2012, Lindbekk 2013 & 2017, Aluffi 2019), television drama offers a more nuanced depiction. Inspired by the Law and Humanities approach to interpreting literary, televisual, and cinematic texts ‘jurisprudentially’ (MacNeal 2007, Sarat 2011, Manderson 2018), this paper examines the representations of divorce in Egyptian TV series of the 2020s, with a focus on agency. How is agency articulated in these televisual texts? What do these portrayals reveal about the underlying intersections of gender and class in the context of divorce? The paper explores the linguistic expressions used to discuss divorce, particularly the various verbal forms applied to the root ṭ-l-ʾ (divorce): the direct active form ṭallaʾ (X divorces Y), and the passive/reflexive ʾitṭallaʾ (X is divorced). What forms of agency are characters invoking when they use an expression like nitṭallaʾ (we divorce), for instance? The paper also examines the incidence of the use of the root ḫ-l-ʿ (divorce upon remuneration by the wife). This analysis maps these expressions onto a gender and class matrix, considering the narrative roles they play. This complex matrix reveals a diversity of portrayals that challenges conventional views of divorce in Egypt in terms of gender (i.e., husbands divorce wives), class (i.e., husbands and wives have the same agency irrespective of social class), and their intersections. A closer analysis further illuminates how characters use different expressions in varying contexts to convey different forms of agency and perform distinct gender roles. The paper thus argues that the ‘popular jurisprudence’ of divorce that these televisual texts articulate is far more gender-neutral and class-specific than what legislation, scholars and courts claim.

Nafisa Kianni (University of East London) An intersectional analysis of British Muslim women’s political experiences during the process of selection, election and operation of the work environment

Since October 2023, 224 women have worked in the House of Commons as MPs. This is the first instance when the representation of women has increased beyond a third. After the 2024 general election, the number of Muslim women has not increased dramatically to 25, as only 13 Muslim women were MPs before the general election. The purpose of this thesis is to discover if Muslim women face certain barriers when seeking political office. Some of these obstacles are connected to kinship networks, flawed recruitment practices and family commitments. This thesis takes an intersectional lens by considering how ethnicity, age, gender and religion operate as factors impacting Muslim women’s employment paths. Researching a diverse range of political roles creates a broad and representative sample, allowing the sharing of different experiences that previous studies have not offered. Thematic analysis will be undertaken to find key themes emerging from the results. This research is based on qualitative interviews with British Muslim women across political parties within the United Kingdom, where obstacles including electoral fraud, have been prevalent. This study seeks to understand what is classed as discrimination and which factors hinder women’s capacity to seek political office. It aims to specify the psychological effects of British Muslim women’s exclusion from political office and the positive benefits to society and policy-making associated with better representation of British Muslim women in political roles. This research seeks to fill the academic gap, as limited research exists on Muslim women encountering challenges in political careers.

18.00-19.00: Reception hosted by the Aga Khan University's Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations (Atrium)

18.30-19.30: Special Panel: Advice for Postgraduate and Early Career Researchers in Islamic Studies (ACR)

Day 2: Tuesday 19 May  

10.00-11.30: Panel Session 4 

Law, Authority, and Reform in the Late Ottoman Empire (Room 220)

Chair: Tom Woener-Powell (University of MAnchester)

Hamdi Çilingir (Sakarya University) and Şerife Eroğlu Memiş (Ankara Hacı Bayram Veli University) Between State Interest and Waqf Interest: The Council of State (Şûrâ-yı Devlet) and Ottoman Interventions in Waqfs, 1868–1908

In classical Islamic law, the waqf was conceived as a perpetual institution designed to function indefinitely. By attributing ownership to the divine and dedicating usufruct to the public, the waqf was endowed with a distinctive form of legal inviolability unmatched by other juridical institutions. The preservation of this institution depended on protecting both its material assets and legal status from external interference. Despite this normative framework, waqfs—precisely because of their central role in social, economic, and urban life—were frequently subjected to various forms of intervention in Ottoman legal practice.
This paper presents the first findings of an ongoing, archival-based research project that examines state interventions in waqfs during the late Ottoman period through the adjudicatory practices of the Şūrā-yı Devlet (Council of State), established in 1868. Drawing on selected cases reviewed between 1868 and 1908, the study analyses disputes arising from state actions such as deductions from waqf revenues, the taxation of previously exempt foundations, interference in the appointment and dismissal of mutawallīs, and interventions in waqf lands and family waqfs. These measures frequently prompted waqf administrators and beneficiaries to seek legal redress by petitioning the Şūrā-yı Devlet. Rather than offering a purely doctrinal account of “intervention,” the paper adopts an institutional and administrative perspective to explore how the Council interpreted, negotiated, and adjudicated conflicts between maslahat al-dawla (state interest) and maslahat al-waqf (waqf interest) within the context of an expanding modern bureaucratic order. It asks whether the Şūrā-yı Devlet primarily functioned as an instrument for legitimising state authority over charitable endowments or whether it operated as a mediating body that sought to reconcile state governance with the normative foundations of the waqf institution. By analysing early findings derived from systematic archival research, this paper highlights the role of the Şūrā-yı Devlet in redefining the boundaries of permissible state intervention while preserving, at least in part, the classical conception of waqf inviolability. In doing so, it contributes to broader debates on Ottoman administrative law, Islamic legal institutions, and the transformation of governance in the nineteenth century.

Ismail Noyan (Simon Fraser University) Towards a More Connected History of the Mecelle: Islamic Law, Codification, and Transimperial Networks Beyond Istanbul 

The Mecelle-i Ahkâm-ı Adliye (1868–1889) was the first codification of civil law in the Islamic world, grounded predominantly in Hanafi jurisprudence and produced at the intersection of Islamic legal traditions and nineteenth-century global codification movements. This paper advances a connected and trans imperial reading of the Mecelle by drawing on previously unused minutes of the Mecelle Committee and extensive archival research in Ottoman repositories. It argues that the making and afterlives of the Mecelle were not confined to Istanbul, to a small circle of elite Muslim statesmen, or even to the territorial boundaries of the Ottoman Empire.
Although imperial and institutional hierarchies remained firmly in place, the codification process was embedded in wider intellectual, legal, and administrative networks that complicate Istanbul-centric narratives of Ottoman legal modernity. The preparation of the Mecelle’s sixteen volumes and the sustained activities of the Mecelle Committee between 1868 and 1889 actively produced and expanded these networks, in which Istanbul functioned as an important, though by no means the only node. Second, the paper further challenges the assumption that the Mecelle’s predominantly Hanafi character rendered it a legal project “by Muslims for Muslims.” While non-Muslims did not participate directly in the committee’s deliberations, they nevertheless played a significant role in the Mecelle’s dissemination and interpretation. Through petitions, requests for clarification, translations, commentaries, and instructional texts, non-Muslim Ottoman subjects contributed to the circulation, operationalization, and contestation of the code across the empire. Finally, the paper traces the Mecelle’s trans imperial afterlives to show how it functioned as a working model, a source of legal legitimacy, and a catalyst for debates on codification beyond the geographic and political borders of the Ottoman Empire. The Mecelle served as a legal imperial tool through which the empire sought to sustain or assert a degree of imperial presence in regions that were either under European occupation and/or enjoyed significant autonomy such as Egypt, Bosnia, and Yemen. In other cases, the Mecelle exerted a powerful influence as a model of codification and was utilized as a source of legitimacy beyond the borders of the empire including Algeria under French occupation, post-Ottoman Montenegro, and Sultanate of Johor. Last but not least, the Mecelle rejuvenated debates functioned as a catalyst for broader conversations about the codification, legal modernity and Islamic law across the wider Islamic world such as among the reformers in Kazan and Afghanistan.

Bilal Taşkın (Istanbul Medeniyet University) Layers of Reality in Late Ottoman Thought: Ismā‘īl al-Galanbawī’s Theory of Nefs al-Amr 

The problem of reality constitutes the most fundamental and enduring concern of Islamic intellectual tradition, encompassing the questions of what exists, where it exists, how it is known, and how it is expressed. This paper investigates the multi-layered reality concept of Ismā‘īl al-Galanbawī (d. 1791), a prominent 18th-century Ottoman philosopher and logician, who extensively analyzed the boundaries of reality across existence, knowledge, and language. The core problem addressed is the premise that anything we speak about or accept as true must possess a context of reality beyond the mere subjectivity of the human mind.
Al-Galanbawī argues that reality is not limited to sensory objects but extends to a much broader domain that Islamic thinkers call nafs al-amr (the reality-in-itself). According to al-Galanbawī, this domain serves as the ultimate ground for the truth-value of all propositions. Through his works on logic and theology, such as the Risālat al-Imkān, he develops a sophisticated taxonomy of existence, identifying various layers that include actual, hypothetical, and even impossible entities.
A significant part of al-Galanbawī’s contribution is his distinction within "Considered Existence" (al-wujūd al-mu‘tabar). He categorizes reality into several ontological strata: al-wujūd al-khārijī al-muḥaqqaq (actual external existence), al-wujūd al-khārijī al-muqaddar (hypothetical external existence), and al-wujūd al-khārijī al-mawhūm (imaginary or consensual existence). He demonstrates that even impossible concepts, such as a "partner to God," possess a form of "hypothetical mental existence" (al-wujūd al-dhihnī al-faraḍī) within nafs al-amr, which allows for the formulation of true propositions about them. Furthermore, this paper explores al-Galanbawī’s synthesis of the Kalām and Falsafa traditions. He critiques previous theories of nafs al-amr, such as Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī’s identification of it with the Active Intellect, and instead aligns it with a more comprehensive reality that includes even "pure negation" (al-nafy al-maḥḍ) as a ground for negative propositions. By examining al-Galanbawī’s intricate analysis of how these layers interact—from the priority of particulars in the external world to the status of future events in divine knowledge—this study highlights the profound complexity of late Ottoman metaphysical thought. Ultimately, al-Galanbawī’s framework suggests that Islamic thought recognizes a pluralistic structure of reality where every true statement finds a corresponding ground, ensuring a coherent relationship between mind, language, and the cosmos.

From Creed to Currency: Islamic Legal and Ethical Reasoning Across Time and Space (Room 215)

Chair: Ali-Reza Bhojani (University of Birmingham) 

Camelia Garchi (Ez-zitouna University) Shari'ah Compliance or Islamic Moral Economy? Operationalising Ibn Ashur's Maqasid via sustainability 

This paper examines the ethical performance of Islamic banking institutions by interrogating the increasing divergence between the normative aspirations of Islamic economics and the contemporary practice of Islamic finance. While Islamic finance was originally envisioned as a value-based alternative promoting justice, equity, and social welfare in line with the Maqasid al-shari'ah (Higher objectives of Islam), institutional developments increasingly point to a growing convergence with conventional banking models. The paper argues that this deviation from Islamic economy ideals is partly rooted in the dominant reliance on a Ghazalian, protectionist understanding of Maqasid, which prioritises the preservation of necessities while remaining under-equipped to address contemporary technological, developmental, and ecological challenges. In contrast, drawing on the Maqasid philosophy of Ibn Ashur, the study advances a broader and more dynamic conception of Maqasid centred on human dignity, public welfare, justice, and freedom, where sustainability is not treated as an exogeneous variable externally, but as an intrinsic dimension of Islamic moral reasoning, grounded in foundational concepts such as khilafah (human stewardship) and mizan (balance).
Building on this conceptual foundation, the paper develops an original Maqasid-based performance index for Islamic banks, translating Ibn Ashur’s normative objectives into empirically observable institutional indicators. Methodologically, these indicators are operationalised through internationally recognised sustainability standards, specifically the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) framework adapted to the banking sector. The Maqasid index score is derived from a content analysis of Islamic banks’ annual disclosure reports across the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and selected African jurisdictions between 2015 and 2025, using a binary scoring scheme to assess whether specific indicators are explicitly addressed. The findings reveal a gap between formal Shari'ah compliance and substantive Maqasid achievement within Islamic banking practice. The Maqasid index scores display substantial heterogeneity across institutions and regions, underscoring the role of regulatory, institutional, and disclosure environments in shaping Maqasid realisation. Notably, banks that explicitly engage with sustainability or ESG-oriented frameworks, as well as those adopting voluntary non-financial disclosure practices, tend to achieve higher Maqasid scores, whereas strong Shari'ah-compliance signalling alone does not systematically coincide with superior maqāṣid performance. This research contributes to the literature by offering a theoretically robust and empirically grounded framework to evaluate Islamic finance from a Maqasid-driven perspective. By integrating the classico-reformist maqasid thought of Ibn Ashur with contemporary sustainability frameworks, the paper provides a concrete pathway for re-embedding Islamic finance within its original moral economy vision and restoring Maqasid as an institutional and societal project.

Kadir Gombeyaz (Kocaeli University) The First (?) Commentary on al-Fiqh al-Akbar Written in Mamluk Egypt: Ahmad b. Sayf al-Din b. Fakhr al-Din al-Nasafi and His Sharh al-Fiqh al-Akbar 

Al-Fiqh al-Akbar is a concise creed treatise attributed to Abu Hanifa, one of the most influential and renowned figures in Islamic thought. Numerous commentaries on this work were written, particularly during the Ottoman era. When we pursue the question of when, where and by whom the first commentary was written, we come across an interesting picture. The commentaries that we have been able to identify were written in three different regions under the rule of three different states in the 9th/15th century and by three different authors who were unaware of each other's commentaries. One of them, recently published and estimated to have been written around 820/1417, was presented to Ulugh Beg in Samarqand under the Timurid rule and belongs to an author named Alaeddin 'Alī al-Bukhārī. The other was written by an Ottoman scholar, Ilyās b. Ibrahim al-Sīnobī (d. 891/1486), who presented it to Mahmud Pasha, the grand vizier of the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II, in 865/1460. Another commentary is by Ahmad b. al-Sayf al-Dīn b. Fakhr al-Dīn al-Nasafī (d. after 845/1441), who dedicated his work to the Mamluk sultan Abu Said Sultan al-Malik al-Zahir (r. 840-856/1438-1453), who dedicated himself to finish the work in al-Azhar Mosque in the last ten days of the month of Rabi‘ al-Awwal in 844. This paper aims to introduce this commentary, which is still in manuscript form, to the scholarly world by focusing on possibly the earliest commentary on al-fiqh al-akbar written in the Mamluk period and within Mamluk territories. In addition, by comparing this commentary with two other commentaries written in different regions under different states in the same century. This analysis will elucidate how the author diverged from his contemporaries, thus shedding light on the specific theological concerns and religious priorities that prevailed in the Mamluk period.

Syed Muhammad Bilal Zaidi (LUMS) When "Principal" Loses Meaning: Ribā, Fiat Money, and the Ethics of Obligation 

The Qur'anic prohibition of ribā stands among the most emphatic moral injunctions in Islamic scripture. Yet contemporary discourse on its application remains marked by an unexamined assumption: that the monetary conditions under which classical jurists formulated their rulings persist unchanged into the modern era. This study argues that this assumption of monetary continuity obscures a fundamental rupture that demands scholarly attention. Classical ribā doctrine presupposes three conditions embedded in the Qur'anic command "you may have your principal" (2:279): that principal is recoverable, that its value remains stable over time, and that surplus can therefore be objectively identified. Under the metallic monetary systems of the classical period, these presuppositions held without requiring explicit articulation. Gold and silver coins embodied value directly; the passage of time did not, in itself, erode what was owed. A dinar lent was a dinar returned. Surplus was visible, measurable, and causally attributable to the contract itself. Modern fiat monetary regimes have abolished this stability. Inflation is not aberration but policy objective; central banks explicitly target continuous erosion of purchasing power as consistent with "price stability." Under such conditions, the concept of principal undergoes an ontological transformation, shifting from determinate quantity to probability distribution over possible future values. A loan extended today will be repaid in currency units of uncertain worth, dependent on inflation paths that neither borrower nor lender controls. The problem admits no neutral technical solution. Indexation merely relocates indeterminacy rather than resolving it: no price index is neutral, each embedding contestable assumptions about whose consumption patterns define "real value." The deliberations of the International Islamic Fiqh Academy on currency fluctuation reveal the depth of this juristic struggle, ultimately defaulting to nominal settlement not because it is just, but because the just solution cannot be identified through available contractual tools. When principal cannot be identified except by convention, the moral command to return it loses determinate meaning. This study combines Qur'anic textual analysis with formal monetary reasoning to demonstrate that the collapse of principal measurability necessitates a reconceptualization of ribā as a moral category concerned with domination through obligation, rather than a mechanical rule triggered by numerical excess. The argument is diagnostic rather than permissive. It does not issue rulings; such determinations belong to qualified juristic authority. Rather, it clarifies how fidelity to the prohibition's moral substance requires analytical tools adequate to the conditions Muslims now inhabit.

Between Tradition and Nation in East and Southeast Asian Islam (Room 219)

Chair: Ermin Sinanovic (Shenandoah University) 

Adele Cozzani (University of Naples) Islamic education in China during the Ming-Qing era: an introduction to Jingtang Jiaoyu, the Chinese Islamic educational system 

Uṭlub al-ʿilm wa law fī Ṣīn (اطلب العلم ولو في الصين), “Pursue knowledge, even if you must go as far as China.” Indeed, Islam has reached even East Asia, flourishing in China into one of the most remarkable intellectual and philosophical gems of knowledge — an expression of the capacity of Islam to dialogue with and harmonize alongside diverse local cultures. In China, Islam has a long history, tracing back to the Tang dynasty in the 7th century, but it flourished particularly during the Ming (1368–1644) and Qing (1644–1912) dynasties, when a profound cultural dialogue emerged between Islamic and Confucian traditions. A pivotal event in the history of Islam in the country was the establishment of Jingtang Jiaoyu 经堂教育, the Chinese Islamic educational system founded in the second half of the 16th century by the Muslim scholar Hu Dengzhou 胡登洲 (1522–1597). This event marked a true milestone in the development of Islamic knowledge in China. First, it addressed indeed the educational and religious impoverishment experienced by the Hui people (the Chinese Muslim community) at the beginning of the Ming period - according to his biography, Hu Dengzhou himself lamented the scarcity of available religious texts in China and the shortage of scholars trained in Islamic sciences, which made access to proper religious education increasingly difficult. Second, Jingtang Jiaoyu introduced a structured schooling model, systematic both in pedagogy and institutional organization. By providing a replicable model of learning, it created a standardized framework that could be applied throughout China. These innovations allowed Jingtang Jiaoyu to disseminate literate Islamic knowledge across the country and set the stage for the later emergence of the Han Kitab, the Sino-Islamic scholarly tradition that fully matured during the Qing dynasty. Jingtang Jiaoyu exemplifies a truly Islamic faith and erudition, harmoniously adapted to Chinese culture and society—a legacy that deserves greater recognition in the academic world.
It would be my greatest pleasure to present this invaluable heritage. After providing a concise historical introduction, my presentation will focus on the literary corpus employed and the educational curriculum implemented.

Trang Nguyen Quynh (VNU University of Social Sciences and Humanities) The Philosophy of “Purification” in Shiʿa Theology and Its Localization through the Roja Ritual of the Cham Bani Community in Vietnam 

This research focuses on analyzing the interaction between Shi'ite Islamic ideology and the indigenous cultural practices of the Cham Bani community in Vietnam, examined through the theological concept of 'purification' (Tahara). Within Shi'ite theology, purification is not merely a set of rules for physical hygiene (exoteric/zahir) but also encompasses the cleansing of the soul, devotion to the Holy Family (Ahl al-Bayt), and an inner spirit of asceticism (esoteric/batin). The study indicates that, due to historical upheavals and geographical , these core ideological tenets underwent a profound process of 'indigenization' upon permeating the Cham community, ultimately giving rise to a unique religious configuration: Bani Islam
The central focus of this paper is the analysis of the Roja (Ramadan) ritual—the quintessential manifestation of the philosophy of purification within Cham Bani life. Distinguishing itself from orthodox Sunni Islam, where fasting is an obligatory practice for all believers, the Cham Bani implement a mechanism of 'representative purification.' Accordingly, the clergy (Akar) assume the role of practitioners who observe asceticism, fasting, and prayer within the mosque (Magik) on behalf of the entire community. This represents a unique synthesis of the Shi'ite ascetic spirit and the indigenous stratified social structure, in which the clergy act as spiritual intermediaries to cleanse the sins. The study employs an interdisciplinary approach, integrating the anthropology of religion with ethnographic fieldwork to elucidate symbols of purification. The imagery of water in ritual ablutions, the white attire of the clergy, and the invocation of ancestors to witness the month of Roja demonstrate the intersection between Islamic law and the polytheistic ancestral beliefs of the ancient Cham. The research findings confirm that the Shi'ite philosophy of purification has been 'softened' or localized by the Cham people to harmonize with their matrilineal system and indigenous worldview. This not only facilitates the preservation of ethnic identity but also serves as evidence of the vigorous vitality of cultural acculturation. Ultimately, this research contributes a fresh perspective on the diversity of Islam within the Southeast Asian context.
Keywords: Shi'ite Islam, Cham Bani, Philosophy of Purification (Tahara), Religious Indigenization, Roja Ritual, Anthropology of Religion.

Irfan Sarhindi (University of Oxford) Between Pancasila and Caliphate: Muslim Students Making Sense of Political Standpoints in Indonesia's Post-Digital Education 

Indonesia is a multireligious society with the largest Muslim population. As it is not an Islamic State, nor is Islam the only official religion, it implements a democratic political system based on Pancasila, which means the five principles: belief in God, humanity, unity, democracy, and social justice. While Pancasila and Religious Education (RE) are studied compulsorily from primary to higher education, the relationship between Islam and Pancasila is contentious, since the early days of Indonesia’s independence to the post-9/11 jihadist threats and bombings. In whichever pathway and despite the differences, Pancasila is relatively perceived as a false god. Therefore, rejecting Pancasila and embracing the Islamic caliphate is often assumed to be the only way to practice Islam fully. However, such a view overemphasises the indoctrination process, neglects the nuances and complexities of the discourse, and underestimates students’ agency in meaning-making. Conducting a phenomenological study across five societal cultures in Indonesia—Aceh, Medan, Yogyakarta, Banjarmasin, and Bali—the study aims to fill this gap. Thirty students at five different schools were interviewed. Their online learning was simulated and screen-recorded through Think Aloud Analysis. Data were then analysed using textural, structural, and composite interpretations. This study found that, firstly, adherence to the Islamic caliphate does not necessarily reflect support for radical Islam. As students reinterpreted such political standpoints as cultural forces to ensure public piety, they perceived the Islamic caliphate as less opposed to Pancasila, indicating a fluid understanding and acceptance that enriched nuance. Secondly, the context of societal culture appears to influence students’ stance on the Islamic caliphate and Pancasila. Those living in a strict Islamic society in Aceh were more favourable towards the former, as they experienced the enactment of Sharia bylaws. Such was less likely in the multicultural metropolitan of Medan and the Hindu society of Bali. This sheds light on students’ ability to reinterpret conceptions that might not align with the intended meaning. This indicates not only the danger of simplification but the instrumentality of students’ agency. This also captures the shift of Islamists to post-Islamism that reorients the campaign to establish a more Islamic society of the democratic republic of Indonesia. While generalisation is avoidable, the study contributes to the discussion of Islam, post-digital education, and (de-)radicalisation.

Tingting Zhong (University of St Andrews) A Mainland Hui Muslim on the Periphery: Naming "Self" and "Other" in Ma Jianfu's Zaichang de Xinyang

Since the 1950s, the minzu 民族 (ethnic) classification system has been used to distinguish ethnicities by emphasising their designated ethnic, cultural and religious identities, often accompanied by a series of cultural and social conjectures. Under this system, Hui are recognised as one of the ten Muslim minorities in Mainland China. However, its influence is limited in its peripheral regions like Hong Kong. During British colonial rule in Hong Kong (1841-1997), Indian soldiers, sailors and merchants helped establish the Muslim community through land leases and building mosques and cemeteries. Its relative political stability and commercial prosperity under British governance also made it a temporary or permanent shelter or home for those fleeing wars, persecution or economic uncertainty, including Hui from Mainland China and Muslims from Indonesia and South Africa. Altogether, these circumstances have shaped diverse political and social outlooks that define Muslim and Hui identities in their own ways. The author Ma Jianfu bases his ideas of Hui and Muslims on his upbringing in the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region in Mainland China. Ningxia has the largest concentration of Hui and features a distinctive Hui culture, influenced by the ethnic-religious terms established in the wider minzu classification system and its corresponding policies. When Ma, as a mainland Hui Muslim, enters Hong Kong, a conceptual paradigm conflict can be discovered in his ambiguity and often self-contradictory perception of different Muslim communities and their situated spaces in Hong Kong society, as can be seen in his non-fiction collection of personal essays Zaichang de xinyang 在场的信仰 (The present beliefs, 2015). This collection documents Ma’s everyday personal experiences engaging with various Muslim communities and institutions in Hong Kong, peppered with other stories about ordinary local people and their culture and customs. Inspired by Roland Barthes’ 1977 inauguration pointing out the ubiquity of power in “the language we speak and write”, this paper examines Ma’s diction in his work. I refer to his word choices as naming practices, including the use of names, proper nouns, labels, and terminologies, which demonstrate his perception of the Self-Other relationship and his tendency to impose pre-established classifications, such as social and political frameworks, on external environments and social phenomena. Meanwhile, Homi Bhabha’s concept of “hybridity” reveals how an “un-hybrid” individual perceives a hybrid space (the diverse Hong Kong Muslim community as a whole) and hybrid individuals (for instance, a Pakistani-Hong Kong Muslim individual) through the author's naming practices.

Islam in Contemporary Europe: Faith, Migration, and Governance (Room 221)

Chair: Alyaa Ebbiary (Lancaster University)

Martin Eidrup (University of Gothenburg) and Goran Larsson (University of Gothenburg) Regulating Islam Through Democracy Criteria: A Comparison of Swedish and Belgian Legislation 2015-2025 

This paper examines the emergence, development, and use of “democracy criteria” in the legal regulation of Muslim communities in Sweden and Belgium. Drawing on a comparative analysis of legislative documents in the timespan 2015-2025, the article analyses this legislative history through the lens of juridification, arguing that contemporary regulation increasingly relies on criteria such as transparency, participation, gender equality, and the absence of foreign influence. Although formally applicable to all religious groups, these standards have largely evolved in response to concerns that Muslim organizations and individuals embody undemocratic values or external loyalties. The article situates the rise of democracy criteria as a relatively recent development in the secular regulation of religion. While Sweden and Belgium are countries with distinct histories of religious governance, this comparison reveals shared European assumptions about the proper role of religion in a democratic society and illuminates how democratic ideals are translated into legal norms that define legitimate religion in contemporary Europe.

Egdunas Racius (Vytautas Magnus University) and Katarzyna Gorak-Sosnowska (Warsaw School of Economics) Migration of Central and Eastern European convert Muslims to the MENA region: between religious obligation (of hijra) and utility 

Though by now, hundreds of Central and Eastern European converts to Islam reside in the MENA region, their motivation to relocate and their expectations of life in the Middle East have hardly been studied. The proposed paper, based on in-depth interviews with Central and Eastern European expats (chiefly Polish and Lithuanian nationals) in the MENA, seeks to uncover to what extent these converts chose the MENA region as their destination out of religious convictions, namely, the purported duty of hijra, and how they reflect on their decision to come and live in the region. The paper reveals how hijra (as well as dar al-islam as opposed of dar al-harb/ dar as-sulh) is conceptualized, understood and actualized by contemporary European converts to Islam against the backdrop of both the classical notions of it and within the framework of the fiqh al-aqalliyyat.

Daniel Vékony (Corvinus University of Budapest) Rejecting “bad Muslims”: The selective nature of Central European migration policies and image construction of Muslims in the context regular and irregular migration

Since 2004 with the joining of the European Union, Central European countries have seen a steady decline of their populations. As a result, Central European governments realized that they also need to turn to immigration as a tool to replenish their declining populations to sustain their welfare states. After the 2015 migration crisis, the issue of migration and Muslims became linked with threats to national security both in physical and ontological terms.
The paper builds on the concept of Frontier Orientalism, coined by André Gingrich and further developed by scholars such as Melegh (2006) and Sabatos (2018). In addition, Brubaker’s (2017) notion of civilizationism will serve as a theoretical framework to argue that right-wing populist politicians use migration and Muslims to position themselves not only as protectors of their national populations but also as defenders of “Christian Europe,” allegedly abandoned by Western European liberal political leaders. The paper argues that, in line with this revived Christian-nationalist self-image, these governments have introduced selective immigration policies that prioritize migrants who are either not Muslim or do not fall into the category of a “bad Muslim,” and thus are not regarded as Muslims in political discourse. The analysis engages with broader scholarship on Islamophobia, including Central European specificities of Islamophobia as Górak-Sosnowska (2022) and Racius (2018) who proposed the term Muslimophobia. The paper explores and analyses the locally constructed image of the “bad Muslim,” and delineate distinctions between “good” and “bad” Muslims in the political narratives of Poland and Hungary. It argues that “bad Muslims,” primarily from Arab MENA countries, are depicted as threats to the harmony and peace of Christian European societies. Conversely, the paper will also analyse the image of the “good Muslim,” typically understood as individuals from societies that have undergone a prolonged secularization process, such as those in Central Asia, or from countries considered important foreign policy partners. The paper will demonstrate the selective nature of migration practices and the parallel construction of differentiated narratives, driven by pragmatism and shaped by economic and demographic realities. We argue that negative portrayal of Muslims from Middle Eastern countries are in contrast with contrasted with regular, non-Muslim or “good Muslim” migrants, who are permitted entry under strict regulatory conditions. The paper will analyse the discursive strategies deployed by relevant political actors in Poland and Hungary to demonstrate the selective and pragmatic nature of image construction regarding Muslims and the corresponding political practices.

Hermeneutics in Motion: Ethics, Mysticism, and Moral Consciousness in the Qurʾān (ACR)

Chair: Ahmed Tahir Nur (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona)

Sheam Abdul Aziz Khan (Cardiff University) Before the Pen Touches the Page: The Qur'an as Read by its Translators - A Study of Contextual Determinants in the Hermeneutics of Qur'anic Translation 

This paper investigates how Qur’anic hermeneutics is shaped by the translators’ embedded social, cultural, and experiential contexts. It argues that attention to the Qur’an translator’s own contextual determinants is essential for understanding how meaning is produced in Qur’an translation. As readers before they are writers, translators approach the Qur’an through affective prisms; including inherited frameworks, mediated narratives, and personal or collective trauma, which inform how they interpret and subsequently render the text. The study aims to demonstrate that such positionalities play a constitutive role in how Qur’anic meanings are articulated, framed, and ethically negotiated across linguistic and cultural contexts often going undetected by the target audience.
Methodologically, the study integrates Critical Discourse Analysis with insights from Trauma Theory and a decolonial hermeneutic framework to analyse English renderings of Qur’anic verses, revealing how experiential, ideological, and methodological factors shape interpretation and challenge assumptions of translator neutrality. The analysis identifies three forms of ideological presence in Qur’anic translation: (1) explicit ideology, visible in overt interpretive interventions; (2) implicit ideology, emerging unintentionally through culturally or personally conditioned readings; and (3) ‘methodogenic ideology’, a term I develop to refer to ideology that arises inadvertently from translation strategies which can introduce theological or jurisprudential implications often not intended or even held by the translator. These findings show that Qur’an translators’ own contextual determinants leave discernible traces that shape the theological and ethical contours of the rendered text. Thus, this paper contributes to ongoing debates on meaning, authority, and interpretive responsibility in Qur’anic studies.

Shabnaz Khan (Institute of Ismaili Studies) Between Text and Practice: Testimonial Inequality, Qurʾānic Verse 2:282, and It's Legal Application in Pakistan  

Despite significant advancements in women's socio-economic participation across Muslim-majority societies, certain legal frameworks continue to reflect patriarchal norms that undermine gender equality. A salient example is the treatment of women's testimony in financial transactions, particularly in Pakistan, where Article 17 of the Qanun-e-Shahadat (Law of Evidence) restricts female testimonial capacity by relying on a traditional interpretation of Qur’anic verse 2:282. This verse prescribes two male witnesses or one male and two female witnesses, “so that if one of the women errs, the other can remind her,” a formulation often invoked to justify testimonial disparity in legal practice. This paper critically interrogates the exegetical, jurisprudential, and legal readings of verse 2:282 through a multidisciplinary methodology that incorporates feminist legal theory, Islamic legal hermeneutics, and gender-sensitive tafsir. It draws upon the works of both classical and contemporary exegetes to challenge literalist and decontextualized readings that underpin discriminatory legal provisions. The research employs a contextualist interpretive and gender equality framework, situating Qur’anic injunctions within their socio-historical milieu to propose a reformist reading aligned with the Qur’an’s ethical principles of justice (‘adl) and equity (qist). In addition to textual and legal analysis, the study incorporates qualitative fieldwork, including in-depth interviews with 10 Muslim working women in Pakistan. These interviews aim to explore how testimonial inequality is experienced, interpreted, and contested by women actively engaged in the financial and professional sectors. Using Pakistan as a case study, this paper examines the operationalization of verse 2:282 in statutory law and judicial decisions, arguing for its re-evaluation in light of maqāṣid al-sharīʿa (objectives of Islamic law) and gender justice. The study contributes to ongoing debates on Islamic legal reform, the transformative potential of Qur’anic hermeneutics, and the reconfiguration of gender norms in modern Muslim societies.

Abdud Dayyan Mohammad Younus (University of Birmingham) Mystical Ways of Knowing and Hermeneutical Coherence in Tafsīr al-Mahāʾimī 

This paper examines the distinctive synthesis of Sufi mystical epistemology and hermeneutical coherence in Tabsīr al-Raḥmān wa-Taysīr al-Mannān, the Qurʾānic commentary of the Indian Sufi scholar ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn ʿAlī al-Mahāʾimī (d. 835/1432). Although classical biographers such as al-Nadawī (1997) praised al-Mahāʾimī’s tafsīr as “a penetrating star in the sky of literature”, his contributions remain marginal in modern studies of Qurʾānic exegesis. Building on recent reassessments (Hasan 2014; Birisik 2019; Zubair and Rahman 2019), the paper argues that al-Mahāʾimī represents one of the earliest systematic thinkers to articulate a coherent mystical hermeneutic in the Indian subcontinent, predating later coherence-based exegetes such as al-Biqāʿī, Farāhī and Iṣlāḥī. The paper examines the epistemological foundations of al-Mahāʾimī’s interpretive method, focusing on his disciplined integration of kashf (unveiling), dhawq (spiritual tasting), and ilhām (inspiration). Al-Mahāʾimī views these experiential forms of knowledge as divinely bestowed insights accessible only to hearts purified through worship and ethical refinement. However, unlike some strands of esoteric interpretation, he subjects mystical experience to strict textual and theological boundaries, insisting that no unveiling may contradict the outward meaning of the Qurʾān or the normative Sunna (Hasan 2014). This epistemic hierarchy—revelation, reason, then experience—functions as a safeguard against speculative excess and provides a framework for integrating mystical consciousness into scriptural interpretation. The second part of the paper analyses al-Mahāʾimī’s hermeneutics of coherence (nazm). He reads the Qurʾān as a thematically and spiritually unified text in which sūrahs and verses are interlinked through subtle rhetorical, symbolic and psychological patterns. His contextual interpretation of the basmala, offering a distinct reading at the opening of each sūrah, and his symbolic yet disciplined treatment of the ḥurūf muqaṭṭaʿāt reveal an exegete who blends structural sensitivity with mystical insight. A close reading of his interpretation of Q.1:5 (“It is You we worship and You we ask for help”) demonstrates how he weaves metaphysical anthropology, spiritual psychology and ethical transformation into a cohesive exegetical framework. The paper concludes by arguing that al-Mahāʾimī’s model offers valuable resources for contemporary debates on religious experience, spiritual authority, and the validation of mystical claims. His insistence that experiential knowledge must be regulated by revelation and ethical virtue provides a compelling paradigm for addressing modern concerns about spiritual authenticity and the misuse of charismatic authority

11:30-12:00: Refreshments

12.00-13.30: Panel Session 5   

Muslim Women at the Intersection of Theology and the State (221)

Chair: Laila Halani (Institute of Ismaili Studies) 

Whitney Buchanan (University of Edinburgh) Progressive Muslimah Leaders' Engagement with Political Muslim Advocacy in the United States and Germany 

Progressive Muslimahs throughout urban cities in the US and Germany have worked in various advocacy, policy, and academic roles that have led them to obtain notable leadership roles. The invaluable efforts of Muslimah leaders have focused on critical issues such as gender justice and policy reform. This paper focuses on the timeframe between 2015-2021, the time of and the time leading up to Trump’s first presidency, as well as the end of Merkel’s tenure as chancellor. Many leaders in my research do not fit within the categories of Muslimahs most scholars analyze. When some academics examine the public sphere, they assume certain kinds of groups. However, they usually study men or more moderate and conservative women who are palatable for the masses. Progressive Muslimahs embracing intersectionality and thriving in the public sphere do exist, as my thesis shows. Muslimahs I am studying do not fit within existing policy frameworks or categories that have dominated scholarship. Such leaders are important not only because of what they say or what justifies their actions in the realm of politics and religion, but also because they show how the categories we have utilized are limited and perhaps even problematic. This paper is separated into three sections based on qualitative data obtained during my fieldwork, where interviews were held in English and German. Concerning the leaders’ theological and ethical outlooks, they worked from internal and external perspectives. The hermeneutics of feminism in Islam was an approach in which leaders referred to throughout interviews. They relied on their own interpretations or shared interpretations of their progressive colleagues and organizations, to interpret Islamic texts and historical narratives in a way that promotes gender justice and liberation, while challenging traditional ideologies and interpretations linked to traditionalist or conservative schools of Islamic thought. This approach focuses on reinterpreting Islamic texts to challenge traditional patriarchal interpretations. The first section of this paper highlights the interpretation of and resonance with progressive Islam. The second part examines the engagement of the leaders with political Muslim advocacy in urban settings. The last portion analyzes issues leaders experienced due to their political Muslim advocacy. I conclude by referring to discourses pertaining to religion and politics in both countries. While I will not provide an exhaustive analysis of these debates, it is important to consider how progressive Muslimahs work in urban settings, as such leaders are frequently excluded from existing narratives and defy traditional categorization.

Anika Kabani (University of Oxford) Islam as Explanation, Secularity as Requirement: The predicament of Muslim women asylum seekers in the U.S. 

This paper examines how the promise of sanctuary in the United States is entangled with regimes of surveillance and securitisation that uniquely shape the experiences of asylum seekers of Muslim heritage. Drawing on two years of ethnographic fieldwork with attorneys, legal advocates, and asylum seekers from the Muslim-majority world, I explore how legal actors and claimants navigate the contradictory terrain of asylum adjudication – where refuge is offered in principle but is conditioned by secular-liberal ideals and national security anxieties. I argue that asylum seekers from Muslim contexts are compelled to perform what I call secular relatability – a mode of self-presentation that downplays religious and cultural identity in order to appear proximate to modes of being narrativised as Western in general and American in particular, and thereby deserving of refuge. Focusing specifically on West African women seeking asylum on the grounds of having undergone female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C) and/or forced marriage, I show how legal advocacy often mobilises Islam-as-explanation, a framing that attributes persecution to reductive religio-cultural stereotypes, and how this is negotiated by the women navigating this framing. These framings, while instrumental in securing protection, simultaneously reproduce hierarchies of belonging: they ask that asylum seekers distance themselves from an imagined oppressive Islam in order to move closer to the imagined secular modernity of the West. This paper interrogates the contradictions, negotiations, and desires that emerge from this gendered dynamic, asking what forms of safety, recognition, and exclusion are produced through migration, and ultimately, what implications that has for how we think about migration as a conditional space of Muslim visibility, vulnerability, and negotiation, and secularity and belonging.

Fatimah Aidara (Independent Researcher) Rābiʿah Reimagined: Divine Love and Poetic Longing in Contemporary Expressions of Tasawwuf 

This paper explores the revival of divine love (maḥabba ilāhiyya) as a central axis of spiritual identity and poetic devotion among Muslim women engaging with Tasawwuf in the modern world. Inspired by the legacy of Rābiʿah al-ʿAdawiyyah — the 8th-century mystic whose radical love for Allah transcended fear and reward — this study traces how contemporary voices echo her path of passionate monotheism (tawḥīd al-maḥabba) through journaling, poetry, and dhikr. Drawing on classical texts, such as Tadhkirat al-Awliyāʾ, and modern poetic works rooted in Sufi metaphysics, I examine how divine love is expressed as both theology and therapy — a healing response to spiritual dislocation, gendered silencing, and modern spiritual fatigue. I focus in particular on how Muslim women, including those outside traditional scholarly spaces, are rearticulating Rābiʿah’s legacy through intimate, creative expressions that prioritize union with the Beloved over legalistic performance or institutional validation. This paper argues that the act of writing for Allah — whether in verse, prayer, or private journaling — serves as a contemporary form of ʿubūdiyyah (servitude) and fanā’ (annihilation), deeply aligned with the Sufi tradition yet radically personal in tone. Far from being a romanticized trope, this reimagined Rābiʿah is a spiritually defiant figure who confronts a fragmented world with sacred yearning, reminding us that the purest knowledge begins in the heart.

Thulfekar Ali (University of Glasgow) Which Eve, Which Women? Creation Narratives and the Making of Women’s Status in Islamic Thought 

This paper examines how competing narratives of Eve’s creation underpin divergent constructions of women’s status in Islamic thought. Moving beyond the assumption of a single, fixed “Islamic” account, it traces how different versions of Ḥawwāʾ’s origin – and their biblical and post-biblical antecedents – have been taken up in Muslim exegetical and legal traditions, and how each narrative maps onto a distinct vision of womanhood. Drawing on a comparative reading of the Hebrew Bible, selected Jewish midrashim, Sunnī and Shīʿī ḥadīth corpora, and classical tafsīr, the paper identifies three major narrative strands: Eve created from Adam’s rib during his sleep; Eve formed from the same clay as Adam as a derivative or “leftover” creation; and Eve created independently, with a distinct origin. I argue that the Qurʾān itself does not commit to the rib narrative and that its association with the Qurʾānic story is largely mediated through ḥadīth and the reception of earlier Jewish and Christian materials. The paper then shows how each narrative strand underwrites different legal and social imaginaries: from ontological hierarchy and female derivative status, to models of complementarity or near-equality. By foregrounding the contingency and plurality of Eve’s origin stories, the paper contends that debates about women’s obedience, authority, and moral reliability in Muslim societies are, in part, debates about which Eve we choose to read into the Qurʾān.

Islam in Conversation: Textual, Theological, and Religious Boundaries (Room 215)

Chair: Clara Pitocchi (University of Oxford)

Marina Pyrovolaki (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki) Jesus as Word and Spirit in the Qur'an: Reframing Christology after Nicaea 

This paper examines how the Qur’an articulates the nature of Jesus (ʿĪsā) in relation to God, focusing on the Qur’anic designations of Jesus as Word of God (kalimat Allāh) and Spirit from Him (rūḥ minhu). While Qur’anic Christology is often characterized primarily through its rejection of Trinitarian theology and divine sonship, this study asks how these affirmations function positively within the Qur’an’s own monotheistic framework and how they relate to late antique Christian theological debates shaped by and following the Council of Nicaea. Earlier scholarship has typically explained Qur’anic Christology either through polemical opposition to Nicene orthodoxy or through influence from Syriac Christianity, so-called “heterodox” Christian groups, or Jewish-Christian milieus. More recent work by scholars such as Angelika Neuwirth, Gabriel Reynolds, and others has reframed the Qur’an as a participant in the broader theological discourse of Late Antiquity rather than a derivative text. However, the theological implications of the paired Qur’anic terms Word and Spirit as applied to Jesus have not yet been sufficiently analyzed in relation to both biblical creation theology and post-Nicene doctrinal developments. The paper employs the method of intertextual polysemy proposed by Abdullah Galadari, drawing on Qur’anic passages alongside biblical texts (Genesis and the Gospel of John), Syriac Christian literature (including the Peshitta and Ephrem the Syrian), and Aramaic concepts such as Memra. Attention is given to semantic, theological, and functional parallels rather than direct literary dependence, situating the Qur’an within a multilingual late antique religious environment shaped by oral transmission. The analysis demonstrates that in the Qur’an, Word and Spirit function not as hypostatic persons but as expressions of divine creative and life-giving agency. Jesus is created through God’s command (“Be!”), animated by God’s Spirit in a manner analogous to Adam, and empowered by the Holy Spirit without sharing in divine essence. This reframing transforms Christology into a form of prophetic theology: Jesus is fully human yet uniquely authorized, embodying divine action without incarnation. The Qur’an thus reconfigures central Christian theological language while preserving strict monotheism. This reading clarifies the Qur’an’s engagement with post-Nicene theology as both critical and dialogical. It highlights continuity at the level of shared late antique theological concerns while explaining divergence in ontological commitments. More broadly, the paper contributes to understanding the Qur’an as a sophisticated theological interlocutor within the Christian debates that followed Nicaea, rather than as an external or purely oppositional voice.

Martin Whittingham (Centre for Muslim-Christian Studies Oxford and Regent's Park College, Oxford) Muḥammad ʿAbduh and Rashīd Riḍā on the Bible 

Muḥammad ʿAbduh (d.1905) and Rashīd Riḍā (d.1935) were two of the most prominent figures in Egyptian intellectual life at the turn of the 19th/20th century. Each is known for their contribution to Islamic thought, some of which they developed in collaboration. However, they also wrote about the Bible, mostly separately, as part of their engagement with Arab and Western Christians, writing in defence of Islam and in the context of British domination of Egypt. ʿAbduh’s writings about the Bible varied according to his purpose and reflect how his attitudes differed at different times. Riḍā was more involved in directly opposing Christian ideas, and therefore at times the Bible, notably in his Shubuhāt al-Naṣārā wa Ḥujaj al-Islām (The Criticisms of the Christians and the Proofs of Islam). His rejection of the reliability of the Bible hardened over his career, and one of his most significant interventions was to arrange the Arabic translation and publication of an alternative gospel message via the so-called Gospel of Barnabas. His publication of this (undoubtedly medieval) document was part of his search for a gospel which aligned with his understanding of Islam. This paper looks at both writers’ treatment of individual Biblical passages, and at their overall attitude to the scriptures of Jews and Christians.

Yasmin Ilkhani (AKU ISMC) The Inversion of Death Pollution in a Contemporary Zoroastrian Cemetery in Yazd, Iran 

This paper is about the dramatic change in Iranian Zoroastrian corpse disposal practices during the 20th century and the subsequent inversion of pollution to purity in a Zoroastrian burial space. Before the mid-20th century, Iranian Zoroastrians practiced a type of sky burial called dakhmih- guzārī to dispose of corpses. However, because of modern ideas of hygiene the practice was abolished by law in 1942 (Khājihpūr and Raūfī, 1397 (2018). As a result of this new law dakhmih- guzārī was gradually abandoned in Iran and gave way to interment in Zoroastrian only cemeteries. Using Eisenstadt’s theory of Multiple Modernities (2000) I explain how the Iranian Zoroastrian community gained legal status enabling the existence of Zoroastrian cemeteries in a Muslim majority country. By asking what this change means for curtailing an immensely polluting corpse, I explain how the polluting corpse takes a central role in the special techniques taken for the curtailment of pollution. Furthermore, I show how the new methods of corpse pollution curtailment led to an inversion of the polluting space of the dakhmih (sky burial space) to the pure space of the cemetery. Moreover, how has such an inversion of pollution impacted local Zoroastrian attitudes towards frequenting the cemetery. In addition to my analysis of notions of death purity and pollution in a contemporary Iranian context, this paper sheds light on the often overlooked multi- religious and multi-ethnic context of Muslim societies.

Ivana Panzeca (University of Palermo) Reading Avicenna in Persian: translations and commentaries on the Kitāb al-Išārāt wa-l-tanbīhāt

Al-Išārāt wa-l-tanbīhāt (The Pointers and Reminders) is Avicenna’s last philosophical summa and was written between 421H/1030 and 425H/1034. Tripartite in Logic, Natural Philosophy and Metaphysics, it was widely commented on, glossed, paraphrased and summarised by leading exponents of the learned milieu, occupying a pivotal role in the intellectual genealogy and transmission chain of philosophy in the Islamic East. Beginning from the 12th century, there started a vast exegetic activity and intense debates on the work, probably because it was compiled in a compact style and belonged to the final phase of Avicennian speculation, therefore conclusive expression of his positions. For a long time, it caught the attention of scholars, who almost entirely neglected the longer and more detailed Kitāb al-Šifāʾ, the predominant orientation during the Safavid Renaissance (16th-18th), when the commentaries on the latter overlapped to those related to the Išārāt. Given the complex circulation of such a representative work of Islamic intellectual history, the field of research still has many gaps. Alongside the commentaries, the manuscript tradition preserves at least four different Persian translations of the work, sometimes abridged or paraphrased. According to the provisional data of the survey, most of their testimonia are preserved in Iran, Turkey, and India, and the amount of copies exemplifies the extraordinary influence of the Avicennian text. Some witnesses are contained in maǧmūʿat, which sometimes also report translations of sections of the Kitāb al-Šifāʾ or the Kitāb al-Naǧāt, or spurious copies of Dāniš-nāma ʿAlāʾī. A systematic inquiry is still a matter of investigation and the purpose of this paper is to offer an overview of the manuscript tradition. These translations constitute a remarkable evidence to the reception of the Avicennian corpus in the Islamicate and Persianate worlds and a crucial vehicle for the transmission of knowledge among different linguistic and ethnic groups across the ages. They also represent valuable examples of the massive and enduring interest in Šayḫ al-Raʾīs’s production over the centuries.

Islam, Authority, and Society in the Contemporary Gulf (Room 220)

Chair: Tom Lea (University of Edinburgh)

Fatima  Elhag (University of Oxford) Family Law in the Gulf: Gender Dynamics, Litigants' Strategies, and Socio-Legal Analysis of Qatar's Judicial Rulings 

The codification of family law in the Gulf has been hailed as a major landmark in the region’s legal history. In Qatar, the Family Law came into effect in 2006 after a decade-long debate and a year-long implementation trial. Scholars have celebrated the law’s responsiveness to changing family arrangements, its introduction of more egalitarian divorce procedures, and its emphasis on the best interests of the child. In the Qatari public sphere, the response has been more mixed. The family law was presented in the state media as a successful articulation of tradition and modernity – the discursive binary that frames Qatari state policy since the 1980s. Judges praised the harmony between legal provisions and social customs of Qatari society. Academics depicted the family code as a productive attempt to systematize people’s life on the basis of religious values and emphasized the code’s reliance on public interest considerations. But criticism of the law has also been widespread. Men in social media have been particularly vocal in their complaints of a feminist bias in the family justice system. This paper starts from the assumption that the effects of legal reforms cannot be examined on the basis of legal codes alone. It focuses on case law to understand the legal ambiguities created by the family code and analyze the strategies devised by men and women. Drawing on a corpus of 34 Cassation Court rulings and a set of interviews with legal actors, I make three interrelated arguments. First, I contend that the legal and non-legal strategies of male and female litigants involved in Qatar’s family justice system are highly gendered. Second, I suggest that references to sharī‘a in family law proceedings are politically ambivalent since they serve to reinforce as well as undermine patriarchy. Finally, I argue that the professionalization of the family justice system in the wake of the 2006 code has led to the growing judicialization of social life in Qatar. In making these arguments, I hope to contribute to a more nuanced discussion on the effects of legal codification and the relationship between Islamic law and women’s rights in the context of the modern state.

Danny Tan (United Arab Emirates University) I am what I wear (or not): The complexities of meanings of Emirati national dress 

“Emirati national dress” (“END”) refers to the male kandura and female abaya (long-sleeve single-coloured long tunics). Unlike “traditional dress” which are worn infrequently, END is everyday wear. Wearing END self-symbolises “I am Emirati”; conversely, it singles-outs non-wearers of being non-Emirati. With only 12% Emiratis in United Arab Emirates, END are visual indicators of banal nationalism of an elite minority in their imagined community. While it is not a uniform, the wearing of END is highly encouraged, and styles/permutations are regulated. In studies of dress, a person who is confident of his/her identity is less likely to show outward visual signs of that membership. Then, the ubiquitous END is an anomaly: As a relatively mature nation at 55 years, why is END still pervasive? As an imagined clothing born to visually unify a disparate people–westernised-clothing, not kandura/abaya, was the norm up till 1970s–END suggests not a completion of self-identification of being Emirati but a continuing process of guided identity-formation. As an elite minority who is threatened by the majority Other, Emiratis wear END as bulwarks to assert their privileged hegemony. This “power dressing” is, however, context driven. Emiratis were warned after 9/11 to dress casually outside UAE since the Islamic nature of END attracted unwanted attention. This ‘END-at-home, non-END-abroad’ persists. My analysis of END reveals complexities in its meanings. First, as common wear, they seem to reflect a personal choice of the wearer to indicate his/her national affiliation. Yet, this agency is not unfettered as the authorities have stepped in to regulate END even though it is a common garb. As potent symbols of national identity, the right to wear END is now protected; non-Emirati clad in END behaving badly on social media has recently resulted in the ban on non-citizens wearing END on those platforms. These regulations of END (including who can wear it, what designs are allowed and how it is worn), hence, make it more a uniform than personal attire. Second, as robust symbols of being an advantaged minority and proud citizens, END is worn to delineate Us/Them but only in the UAE; when overseas, Emiratis unanimously revert to casual clothing as confirmed by my informants. Continued research in END as dichotomous informal bottom-up individualised fashion and standardised top-down collective pseudo-uniform will not only illuminate the mundaneness of clothing but also the evolution of an identity.

Philippe Thalmann (University of Cambridge) Prophetic Landscapes: Salafi lives in post-oil Saudi Arabia 

This paper looks at weekend desert retreats outside Riyadh organised by Salafi circles. I argue that these camps create a “prophetic landscape”: a deliberately arranged space and atmosphere through which participants practice emulation (ittibāʿ) and renew ethical responsibility amid rapid social change. Based on long-term ethnography, I show how retreat-goers search for “pockets” of low light and low noise in order to relearn Qur’anic ways of relating to the environment—especially wind, stars, and the horizon. These elements become practical guides: they help participants time prayer, orient bodies, and sustain temporary khalwa (withdrawal) as a shared discipline rather than an escape. The retreats are not attempts to find an untouched wilderness. Participants explicitly reject “pristine nature” imaginaries found in state branding and orientalist travel writing. Instead, they pay attention to human traces—tracks, wells, fences, rubbish—as reminders of responsibility. Devotion is paired with care through idioms of ḥimā (protected land) and khalīfa (stewardship): “we are gardeners of the land.” I also describe the camp as an ascetic design. Hardship is calibrated as tazkiya (self-purification): speech is limited, light is controlled, and everyday technologies—GPS, radios, vehicle shelters—are used to choreograph attention, conduct, and mutual obligation. Finally, I situate these retreats against experiences of loss tied to the securitised redevelopment of the Ḥaramayn, which many interlocutors feel is erasing prophetic topography. The desert camp becomes a way to recompose prophetic nearness elsewhere—through practice rather than monument—by linking bodily orientation, environmental attentiveness, and stewardship. Conceptually, the paper proposes prophetic landscape as a framework for Islamic ethics that connects emulation, care, and design; and contributes to decolonial environmental humanities by showing how metaphysical presences and material atmospheres co-produce pious life.

Daniel Miller (University of Oxford) "Occupying the Holy Lands of Islam": Intra-Wahhabi Contestation over Non-Muslim Intervention in the Gulf War

The decision by King Fahd, supported by the Council of Senior Scholars, to permit the stationing of non-Muslim troops in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait led to a wave of condemnation from some quarters of the Wahhabi scholarly community. Whilst previous studies have explained this through the doctrine of "al-istiʿāna bi-l-kuffār", the illegitimacy of asking non-Muslims for aid, a further aspect that has escaped explanation is the prevalence of opposition to the physical presence of non-Muslims in the territory of Saudi Arabia. This is of particular interest since the belief that the kingdom constitutes a "sacred territory" was one that was also held by many ulama who had supported the king’s decision. Through analysis of Arabic primary sources, including previously overlooked fatawa from members of the Senior Council and polemics by critics of the regime, this paper seeks to answer two fundamental questions: from where does this belief that Saudi Arabia constitutes a sacred territory originate, and why, considering they shared this belief, did the ulama and their critics come to such different conclusions as to what it meant for the legitimacy of hosting non-Muslim troops? By tracing the origins of this idea from the early Islamic tradition into the modern age, we will make three important observations. Firstly, whilst the existence of an explicitly Islamic sacred territory (or territories) is accepted in the early tradition, there is a lack of consensus over both its location and the nature of restrictions on non-Muslims. As such, the question of whether non-Muslims are permitted into such spaces (and if so what the conditions for this must be) is one for which several ostensibly contradictory positions can be argued. Secondly, the belief that the territory under Al Saud rule specifically represents such a sacred space finds its origins in the early Wahhabi canon, influenced by its emphasis on spatial and spiritual separation from (broadly defined) "non-Muslims", and was inherited in different ways by both the ulama and their critics. Thirdly, it is these differences in their interpretation of this shared principle which informs the ulama and their critics’ respective positions on the legitimacy of foreign military presence. Having demonstrated that the classical source material from which both parties draw their arguments supports such divergent views, we will argue that it is their different understandings of the relationship between religious authority and the state which informs their respective positions.

Islam, Secularism, and Political Authority (ACR)

Chair: Tom Woener-Powell (University of Manchester)

Umar Shareef (Georgetown University) Revisiting the Islamic Secular 

In classical Islamic political thought, siyāsa (governance) referred to the domain in which rulers applied reason to administer justice, preserve order, and secure public welfare. Traditionally, scholars such as Joseph Schacht, Ann Lambton, and Bernard Lewis have described siyāsa as a form of “secular” law distinct from Islamic law (the Sharīʿa). However, the term secular lacks a single definition within the Islamic context. Addressing this concern, two recent academics, Rushain Abbasi and Sherman Jackson, have proposed a new definition of the Islamic secular that operates outside of the Sharīʿa but within Islam’s moral universe. In this paradigm, siyāsa functions within the secular (read as outside of the Sharīʿa) yet still remains religious (i.e. it still remains within Islam). This paper seeks to complicate Jackson’s placement of siyāsa as separate from the Sharīʿa by reexamining siyāsa through the legal concept of taqyīd al-mubāḥ (“restricting the permissible”). This concept refers to the authority of Muslim rulers to restrict or obligate actions that jurists permit to prevent social harm (mafsada) and secure public benefit (maṣlaḥa ʿāmma). Whereas Jackson defines siyāsa as a domain outside the Sharīʿa yet within Islam, taqyīd al-mubāḥ shows how many premodern jurists located siyāsa squarely within the Sharīʿa itself. They argued that the ruler’s legislation through taqyīd al-mubāḥ can create sharʿī legal rulings. Accordingly, for them, siyāsa was not secular or extra-sharʿī but rather an extension of the divine law. By illustrating how siyāsa contributes to the Sharīʿa, this paper argues that the division between the Sharīʿa and siyāsa is more porous than Jackson’s framework allows. Through taqyīd al-mubāḥ, the Sharīʿa includes pragmatic, non-scriptural regulations that contribute to the Sharīʿa’s continuous unfolding. Reframing siyāsa through taqyīd al-mubāḥ thus challenges the necessity of the “Islamic secular” as an analytic category and reveals the Sharīʿa as an evolving legal-moral system encompassing both juristic and political reasoning.

Yahaya Halidu (The University of Texas at Austin) Islam, Modernity & The Crises of Secular Ideologies in Ghana 

This study examines the intersections of Islam, modernity, and secular ideologies in Ghana, highlighting the tensions that arise when religious communities engage with state structures rooted in secular governance. Although Ghana’s secularism is often presented as a neutral framework for managing religious diversity, in practice it privileges certain epistemic systems, constrains alternative knowledge traditions, and shapes the possibilities for Muslim participation in public life. Focusing on Islamic educational institutions, including makarantas, Qur’anic hermeneutics, and transnational scholarly networks, the research investigates how these traditions are reconstituted within state-sanctioned educational and regulatory regimes. Using a qualitative approach that integrates policy analysis, stakeholder interviews, and archival research, the study explores how Ghanaian Muslims navigate these tensions. It examines the strategies employed by religious elites, grassroots activists, and community organizations to negotiate authority, maintain educational autonomy, and assert legitimacy within a secular public sphere. The analysis demonstrates that the challenges posed by secular ideologies are not solely ideological; they are structural, reflecting asymmetries of power, contested definitions of citizenship, and debates over the legitimacy of alternative knowledge systems. By mapping the interactions between Islamic leadership, educational reform, and state institutions, this research sheds light on broader crises of secular governance in plural societies. It contributes to contemporary debates on the relationship between religion and modernity, the resilience of Islamic pedagogical traditions in West Africa, and the limits of secular frameworks in accommodating religious diversity. The study underscores the need to move beyond abstract notions of neutrality and examine the concrete mechanisms through which authority, knowledge, and legitimacy are negotiated in postcolonial contexts.

Dietrich Reetz (Leibniz Zentrum Moderner Orient) Religious Governance and Socialist Ideals: Barkatullah's Pamphlet on "Islam and Socialist Body-Politic" in 1919 

This presentation intends to highlight the ways in which in the absence of secular Indian nationalism Islamic activism was feeding into modern identity politics, anti-colonial and anti-British mobilisation. Maulana Barkatullah (1859-1927) actively participated in this political discourse where he not only attacked British rule but also promoted an interpretation of Islamic governance concepts in line with the social ideals of the socialist movement and Bolshevik activists. In this endeavour he was actively promoted by Bolshevik interlocutors as well as by German representatives. He notably promoted Islamic institutions such as Bait-ul-Mal as sources of help for the poor and destitute. His engagement as representative of the Provisional Government of India was carefully watched by the British, while apparently being partly organised by Bolshevik representatives. While the anti-British and transnational aspects of Barkatullah's engagement have been repeatedly covered, it is intended here to highlight his input of reinterpretation of Islamic principles as foundation of secular policies of social security and stability.

Aneeq Ejaz (University of Texas at Austin) Sacralized Words, Enshrined Body: Pakistan's Founding Father between Scriptural Religion and Sacred Kingship    

In its formative years, the Pakistani state sought to mythologize Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the Ismaili-turned-Shia founder of a Sunni-majority country. On 12th August 1947, two days before the country’s founding, the Constituent Assembly bestowed upon Jinnah the official title of Quaid-e-Azam (“Great Leader”) and mandated the use of this title in all government documents, legislation and correspondence. After his death, Jinnah’s quotes regularly adorned mastheads of national dailies and renditions of his words functioned as preface to national radio programming; in both these cases, Jinnah’s words appeared in spaces otherwise reserved for Quranic verses and Prophetic sayings. In the ensuing years and decades, Jinnah’s portrait came to grace currency bills and coinage, and his body was enshrined in a grand mausoleum in Karachi. In the sphere of print production, an entire hagiographical tradition developed that portrayed Jinnah as a perfect man: a man of destiny, a seer, a leader who could bend the empire to his will. All these developments invited skepticism, muted critique and sometimes open rebuke from Islamist circles who condemned this iconography and shrine-building as instances of idolatry and as a return to divine kingship. This paper argues that the state’s attempt to sacralize Jinnah, and the Islamist opposition to it, is best understood if we situate this contestation in the larger Persianate Islamic history of sacred kingship and charismatic sainthood. In this Persianate milieu, shrines and coinage functioned as spaces of ritual investiture—spaces outside the remit of sharia where the sovereign could be ritually invested with extra-scriptural charismatic authority. Through its mythologizing of Jinnah, the nascent state—which in the case of Pakistan had no historical or ethnic basis—tried to inspire love, honor and loyalty through the body and memory of Jinnah as a saint-king. It attempted to elevate Jinnah not just as a political leader who resided above sectarian schisms but as an embodiment of all that is good, just and moral. To put it differently, the Pakistani state attempted to concretize the political ethics of an impersonal state into the person of Jinnah while the Islamists continually tried to profane and relativize the founding father by bringing the elevated Quaid-e-Azam back to the status of “Mr. Jinnah”. This effort, the paper further argues, highlights the problem of embodiment faced by the modern state: the disembodied, impersonal, disenchanted state which seeks to remedy this crisis by turning to premodern, enchanted forms of authority and embodied sovereignty.

Prophethood, Polemic, and Metaphysics in Sunni Kalām (Room 219)

Chair: Stephen Burge (Institute of Ismaili Studies) 

Navid Chizari (Ibn Haldun University) The Rational Necessity of Prophethood in Classical Muslim Thought 

Classical Muslim theologians of the Māturīdī and Muʿtazilī traditions, as well as Muslim philosophers, argued that prophethood is a rational necessity. While this conclusion is shared across these intellectual traditions, the grounds upon which it is established differ significantly. This paper investigates how theological and philosophical systems, despite their distinct metaphysical assumptions, nonetheless converge on the necessity of prophethood. Focusing on important representatives of the Māturīdī, Muʿtazilī, and the falsafa tradition, the paper offers a comparative analysis of the arguments for the claim that the existence of divine messengers is a rational necessity. The Māturīdī theologians ground this necessity in a conception of divine wisdom, according to which all of God’s actions are directed towards a praiseworthy outcome. Therefore, it would be inconceivable that God creates human beings without providing them with guidance through messengers for their worldly well-being and ultimate salvation. The Muʿtazilī theologians argue for the necessity of prophethood on the basis of their principle of ṣalāḥ and aṣlaḥ. They claim that God acts in the best interest of human beings, which entails that there is an obligation to provide worldly and religious guidance. Although the Māturīdī and Muʿtazilī positions appear similar, there are subtle but significant differences that the Māturīdī scholars highlight as they sought to distinguish their views from the Muʿtazila. Finally, the paper turns to the position of the Muslim philosophers for whom the necessity of prophethood was primarily grounded in a naturalized metaphysical and political framework. On their account, the prophet is a unique individual who acquired intellectual and imaginative capabilities that enable him to convey abstract truths in a form accessible to the general public in order to maintain societal order. By contrasting these three schools of thought, the paper demonstrates how a shared affirmation of the necessity of prophethood can emerge from fundamentally distinct theological and philosophical systems.

Ramon Harvey (Cambridge Muslim College) The Jagged Reed Pen Cuts Sharply: On al-Māturīdī's Lampoons of al-Kaʿbī 

Though theologians routinely engage in polemical and dialectical dispute over ideas with intense religious stakes, in some cases this dynamic gives rise to expressions of sustained personal hostility. One way that this phenomenon can be framed for study is as invective against an interlocutor’s scholarly standing in terms of such qualities as their epistemic competence, epistemic virtue, and moral and religious integrity. In this paper, I analyse Abū Manṣūr al-Māturīdī’s personal attacks against his regional rival, the Muʿtazilī Abū al-Qāsim al-Kaʿbī, which are present throughout his Kitāb al-tawḥīd. By paying close attention to the language of his launched lampoons, as well as classifying their types, I propose to illuminate one aspect of the social positioning of theological scholarship in fourth/tenth-century Transoxiana, showing how invective negotiates theological authority and legitimacy in an intellectual context that has been left murky due to a lack of biographical sources.

Robbie Hoque (University of London) Cognitive Psychology and a Taymiyyan framework for a theory of divine mind

Research on empathy and social cognition in cognitive psychology suggests that God’s knowability on theism, and the scope this provides for divine-human relationship, seemingly depends on the human capacity to develop a theory of God’s mind through the epistemic resources available to us. The Islamic worldview suggests there are two main sources of evidence for such a project: God’s self-disclosure of the divine nature through revealed scripture, as canonised in the tradition of the ninety-name names of Allah, and natural signs in the created order evidencing divine activity and presence in the world. The challenge of modelling God’s mind from this data goes to the heart of a central theological debate in Islam: the need to affirm tashbih, God’s nearness to and knowability by created beings, while safeguarding tanzih, God’s transcendence and absolute incomparability with all creation. Al Ghazali, working with the classical theism of Ash’arism, the predominant school of Islamic theology, reconciled these principles in two main ways: by focussing on the effects of divine attributes rather than on knowing God’s essence through them; and through metaphorical readings of divine names that appeared to contradict a vision of a transcendent God made inscrutable by an atemporal, immutable and impassible nature. Prima facie, then, the idea of human beings using their own cognitive capacities to construct a theory of God’s mind cannot get off ground on the Islamic worldview. However, I shall argue that combining research in cognitive psychology with a Taymiyyan framework for understanding divine names and natural signs may provide a workable engine for modelling aspects of God’s mind that can strengthen divine-human relationship while preserving tanzih. This will use divine names in the canonical ninety-nine as semantic triggers activating cognitive schemas for understanding natural signs as different expressions of God’s presence and character. The paper contrasts simulation theory and theory-theory approaches to modelling minds and outlines how combining the latter with Ibn Taymiyya’s linguistic realism, conceptualist ontology and dynamic view of divine nature provides for a balancing of tashbih and tanzih in theorising about what God might know, intend and value in present and future actions. To demonstrate this theological theory of mind, the paper focusses on names that imply an affective dimension to God’s inner life and how the real-world scenarios that can be seen to manifest them could support forms of empathy in the divine-human relationship.

Davide Ravazzoni (University of Groningen) What Equals the Thing in the Souls: Ibn Taymiyya on Desire and Just Price in Commercial Exchange 

The Ḥanbalī jurist and theologian Ibn Taymiyya (d. 728/1328) developed his doctrine of just price in direct engagement with the market realities of Mamluk Egypt and Syria, where hoarding, monopolistic practices, and the manipulation of essential goods were systemic features of economic life. My research into his economic thought has recently focused on his stance toward price-setting (tasʿīr) and the conditions under which intervention is permitted or obligatory. Yet a fundamental principle underlying his understanding of value formation remains to be examined: the concept of desire (raghba). This paper examines the role of raghba in Ibn Taymiyya's doctrine of just price, arguing that it reveals an original contribution to medieval economic thought, one in which his theological commitments intersect with his pragmatic engagement as a muftī. Ibn Taymiyya defines fair compensation (ʿiwaḍ al-mithl) as “what equals the thing in the souls of those who desire it,” a formulation that accords individual valuation a significant role in price determination. Acknowledging that prices fluctuate according to external factors such as scarcity of supply (qillat al-maṭlūb) and intensity of demand (kathrat al-ṭullāb), he distinguishes desires (raghbāt) as additional determinants, operating separately from hardship (ḍarūra) and general economic need (ḥāja). The paper argues that this recognition of desire as a factor in value is firmly embedded within Ibn Taymiyya’s broader theological commitments and epistemology. God places desires in the hearts of human beings, yet not all desires generate ethical value. The possibility of orienting love (maḥabba) toward the divine provides the criterion for distinguishing legitimate from illegitimate desires. His epistemological optimism—evident in the trust placed in customary practice (ʿurf) and expertise (khibra) as tools for discerning just prices—extends here to human capacity to recognise and act upon rightly ordered desires. Through close analysis of primary sources—primarily fatwas and qawāʿid from the Majmūʿ al-fatāwā—this paper reveals a dimension of his economic thought that has remained largely unexamined. It demonstrates how Ibn Taymiyya’s theological commitments underpin a distinctive engagement with the economic realities of his time. Rather than casting the scholar as a precursor to modern economic theory, it recovers a medieval synthesis of theology and market practice that merits attention on its own terms.

13.30-14.30: Lunch

14.30-16.00: Panel Session 6 

From Page to World: Materiality and Meaning in Arabic Manuscripts (Room 219)

Chair: Aslisho Qurboniev (Institute of Ismaili Studies) 

Sarah Bowen Savant, Mathew Barber, Lorenz Nigst, Masoumeh Seydi, and Peter Verkinderen  (AKU-ISMC): KITAB-Transform – Transforming the Story of the Arabic Book, 700–1800 

This paper introduces a new project and method that sits at the junction of AI and Islamicate book history. Expanding the work of the KITAB project, which identified millions of cases of verbatim text reuse between books in the 2 billion-words OpenITI corpus, the KITAB-Transform project is dedicated to identifying semantic similarity across the corpus. Semantic similarity, the phenomenon of passages with shared meaning (without necessarily sharing the same words), may be the result of a wide array of writerly practices, like paraphrase, summarization, and translation. The detection of such shared meaning is now possible thanks to the text embedding technique that is at the foundation of the large language models that power ChatGPT and consorts. Starting from 15 case studies in which later authors reused earlier works, the project team – comprising eight historians, linguists, and computer scientists – is building systems that can detect different types of such “transformative text reuse” across the corpus. Ultimately, we hope to find evidence for literary systems, whose participants knew and understood transformations as meaningful and interesting.

Jonas Burkhard (Yale University) The Many Lives of the Most Popular Arabic Manuscript World Map: Ibn al-Wardī's (d. 1457) Kharīdat al-ʿAjāʾib wa-Farīdat al-Gharāʾib 

This talk is based on my in-depth analysis of 78 circular world maps contained in manuscripts of Ibn al-Wardī’s (d. 1457) Kharīdat al-ʿAjāʾib wa-Farīdat al-Gharāʾib. Judging by extant manuscript copies, this is the most popular pre-modern Arabic work of geography or cosmography, yet it has attracted almost no scholarly attention. In addition, almost every manuscript is prefaced with a circular world map, making this map – in all its variations – the most frequently reproduced image of the world in the Arabic manuscript tradition. Yet these maps vary greatly, and the purpose of my talk is to understand how and why. The large corpus of extant maps make Ibn al-Wardī’s Kharīda the best case study to understand the production, transmission, and evolution of Arabic manuscript world maps. Through close visual analysis of the maps, material evidence from the manuscripts in which they occur, and a quantitative analysis, I find that maps were not always copied alongside the text of the manuscript with which they are co-located, giving them their own transmission history. This transmission history is characterized by copyist changes that are a sort of cartographic equivalent to scribal errors in the reproduction of manuscript text. I develop a categorization of these changes and show that map copyists introduced accidental and intentional changes that changed the worldview of the maps over time. Lastly, I show how these copyist changes can be used as the basis to calculate (in my case using tools from evolutionary biology) the relationships between maps and to estimate their dates of production based only on their visual features. These findings together show the urgent need for evaluating pre-modern maps in their manuscript contexts, since maps – like manuscript texts – evolve and reflect their specific temporal contexts. That is a significant departure from scholarship on maps to date, which has unduly identified maps with the author of the geographic work in which they appear rather than analyzing them in their own temporal context and in relationship to other maps from which they were copied.

Ahmad Arif Zulkefli (International Islamic University Malaysia) The Importance of Codicological Evidence in African Islamic Manuscript Traditions: A Case Study of Taqyīd fī Bayān Wazn al-Aʿmāl by Aḥmad ibn Mubārak al-Sijilmāsī (d. 1156/1743) 

This study reassesses the attribution of Taqyīd fī Bayān Wazn al-Aʿmāl and demonstrates thecritical role of codicological evidence in establishing manuscript authorship, dating, and transmission within African Islamic manuscript traditions. It specifically identifies and corrects a misattribution by cataloguers, showing that the work previously ascribed to Muḥammad ibn Yūsuf al-Sanūsī (d. 895/1490) was in fact authored by Aḥmad ibn Mubārak al-Sijilmāsī (d.
1156/1743) as a taʿlīq on al-Sanūsī’s fatwā concerning the weighing of actions (wazn al-aʿmāl) in the Hereafter. The study employs codicological analysis of three manuscript copies: two held in the Royal Library of Morocco and one in the Bibliothèque Nationale de Rabat. Examined features include script type (palaeography), writing surface, colophons, ownership statements, symbols, colors, and transmission notes. The results indicate that the manuscript was copied by al-Sijilmāsī from an unknown source and subsequently transcribed by his principal disciple, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Ṭāhir ibn Dāwūd, during al-Sijilmāsī’s lifetime,
providing precise evidence for authorship, dating, and transmission history (sanad). The findings illustrate how codicology not only verifies authorship and dating but also enhances understanding of the manuscript’s intellectual context, scribal practices, and the scholarly networks of the west tradition. This material evidence is crucial for producing accurate critical editions (philological analysis), and clarifying the textual history of African Islamic manuscripts. Codicological analysis should be systematically integrated into manuscript cataloguing and philological studies. It substantially improves comprehension of the text, confirms transmission chains, and provides essential material for producing reliable scholarly editions, thereby strengthening both historical and textual scholarship.

Theology at the Limits of Reason: From Post-Classical Debates to AI (Room 220)

Chair: Mansur Ali (Cardiff University)

Amir Mohammad Emami (University of Exeter) Beyond Conception: Mīrzā Mahdī Iṣfahānī’s Critique of Conceptualising God in Islamic Philosophical Theology 

In classical Islamic philosophical theologies, the existence of God is proven through syllogistic arguments that rely on conceptual constructs such as the First Cause and the Necessary Being, terms that are presumed to represent God. The founder of the Maktab-i Tafkīk (the School of Separation), Mīrzā Mahdī Iṣfahānī (d. 1365/1946), is known as a notable critic of the Islamic adaptation of the Hellenistic philosophy, particularly the Avicennian and the Ṣadrāian traditions, within the intellectual context of Iran and Iraq. In his criticism of Islamic philosophical theologies, he objects to this method of proving the existence of God, arguing that it compromises divine transcendence by attempting to conceptualise the divine realm. In opposition, he maintains that God is essentially inconceivable because He is absolutely other than what He creates, while mental conceptions can only represent God’s creatures. When discussing theology, Iṣfahānī also argues for the existence of God based on the ontological dependence of beings, especially the human self, on the Creator. The divergence, however, manifests in two key dimensions: the metaphysical foundations upon which Iṣfahānī bases his arguments and the epistemological structure he adopts in formulating his ideas. Concerning the former, he objects to the mainstream philosophical views on causation, essence, and existence, replacing them with an alternative metaphysical framework, which he believes to correspond to the teachings of the Quran and the Prophet. Regarding the latter, he advocates for a unique religious epistemology that allows for the direct knowledge of God. The outcome is a nuanced approach to demonstrating God from His signs that trigger the pregiven innate knowledge of God without relying on conceptual or syllogistic reasoning. This paper aims to investigate Iṣfahānī’s distinct approach to the topic with an emphasis on the onto-epistemological framework he develops in opposition to the philosophical hegemony.

Azad Raouf Qazaz (KU Leuven) Zeroness (al-ṣifrāniyya) beyond Oneness (al-waḥdāniyya): A New Metaphor for Divine Transcendence 

This paper proposes zeroness as a conceptual framework for articulating divine transcendence beyond the numerical logic implicit in oneness. While Islamic theology has long developed apophatic strategies and rigorous doctrines of tanzīh to safeguard divine otherness, the notion of divine oneness remains structurally embedded in numerical categorization. Even when incomparability is affirmed, tawḥīd continues to position God as “one” in contrast to “many,” thereby situating the divine within a framework of enumeration. This numerical framing, the paper argues, imposes conceptual constraints that warrant reconsideration when speaking of absolute transcendence. Zeroness introduces zero as a pedagogical and conceptual metaphor for transcendence at a level that numerical oneness cannot adequately capture. This framework engages directly with modern philosophical challenges, particularly the position that God’s existence can neither be conclusively proven nor denied through rational inquiry alone. Zero occupies a unique mathematical and metaphysical position that mirrors this epistemological impasse: it is neither positive nor negative, neither presence nor absence in the ordinary sense, yet it functions as the origin point and condition of possibility for all numerical systems. Just as God's existence resists binary affirmation or negation in modern skepticism, zero transcends the positive/negative dichotomy while remaining foundationally necessary. It enables measurement without itself being measured and grounds enumeration without being enumerated. On the number line, zero marks the axis between opposites while belonging to neither side.
Crucially, zero was not invented but discovered. Prior to its formal notation, the reality it signifies—the threshold between something and nothing and the structural ground of quantity—already existed. This ontological priority distinguishes zero from mere mathematical convention and renders it especially apt as a metaphor for divine transcendence. The paper argues that zeroness helps clarify why certain theological questions—such as inquiries into divine origin or causality—are category errors. Just as it is meaningless to ask what number precedes the origin point of the number line, so too is it conceptually misguided to ask what causes or precedes the divine. Zeroness does not claim that “God is zero”; rather, it draws an analogy between the structural function of zero and the divine as the originative ground beyond the distinction between being and non-being. In this way, zeroness offers a coherent conceptual framework that complements Islamic apophatic theology while avoiding the limitations inherent in numerical oneness. It functions as a pedagogical method, not an ontological claim, bridging transcendent reality and human comprehension.

Sofia Tsourlaki (SOAS) Islamic Liberation Theology in the Digital Age: Critical Reasoning, and AI-Mediated Religious Engagement

The research, stemming from my PhD thesis, examines the emerging discourse of Islamic Liberation Theology as a critical framework for rethinking the role of theology in contemporary Muslim contexts. Historically, Islamic theology (ʿilm al-kalām) has often been approached as an intellectual heritage, preserved through scholastic study rather than engaged as a living, interpretive discipline. This research repositions theology as an active and socially embedded mode of reflection, closely connected to the way contemporary Muslims shape their Islamically informed lived realities. Drawing on the works of key thinkers such as Farid Esack, Asghar Ali Engineer, and Fazlur Rahman, and engaging with recent scholarship on liberationist and reformist Islamic thought, the study connects Islamic Liberation Theology to everyday religious experience. Based on qualitative research with fifty lay Muslims, it demonstrates how classical theological concepts such as divine unity (tawḥīd), justice (ʿadl), and human responsibility (khilāfa) are rearticulated through liberationist frameworks to shape identity, ethical reasoning, and religious praxis in the present. In addition, the research explores the emerging role of artificial intelligence and digital tools in facilitating critical engagement with Islamic theology. Rather than functioning as sources of religious authority, AI-driven platforms are examined as cognitive and interpretive aids that enable access to diverse theological perspectives, encourage comparative reasoning, and support reflective engagement with ethical questions. In this sense, I argue, AI has the potential to enhance critical theological thinking among Muslims by widening interpretive horizons and supporting the emancipatory aims of Islamic Liberation Theology. By reconnecting theology to praxis, this study argues that Islamic Liberation Theology represents not merely a reinterpretation of doctrine but a methodological shift that reclaims theology as an instrument of ethical transformation and resistance to oppression. It further suggests that digital and AI-mediated tools, when approached critically, may strengthen this project by fostering reflective agency rather than doctrinal conformity. Theology, far from being a relic of the past, thus emerges as a dynamic, critical, and constructive force capable of shaping moral identity and transformative engagement in contemporary Islam.

Exploring Qurʾānic Meaning: Stylistic and Theological Perspectives (Room 215)

Chair: Fozia Bora (University of Leeds)

Saf Chowdhury (Cambridge Muslim College) Balancing Revelation and Application: An Analysis of Shaykh ʿAlī al-Qaradāghī’s Fiqh al-Mīzān 

This article examines Fiqh al-Mīzān (the Jurisprudence of the Balance) as articulated and systematised by Shaykh ʿAlī al-Qaradāghī, presenting it as a distinctive methodological framework for contemporary Islamic legal and ethical reasoning. Developed over more than a quarter century, Fiqh al-Mīzān is grounded in the Qurʾānic pairing of al-kitāb (the Book) and al-mīzān (the Balance) as jointly necessary for the realisation of justice (qisṭ), wherein revelation provides normative guidance while divinely grounded standards regulate how texts, values, actions, and contexts are properly weighed. Situating this framework within the broader landscape of Islamic legal theory, the article distinguishes Fiqh al-Mīzān from - while relating it to - approaches such as fiqh al-maqāṣid (objectives-based jurisprudence), fiqh al-awlawiyyāt (jurisprudence of priorities), and fiqh al-muwāzanāt (balancing benefits and harms), arguing that it operates at a more foundational epistemic level by governing the correct use of these tools and preventing category mistakes, domain conflation, and disproportionate moral judgment. Central to the theory is the claim that every element of the sharīʿa - beliefs, rulings, actions, persons, times, places, and circumstances - possesses its own proper weight and must be evaluated according to its appropriate scale, a view supported by the Qurʾān’s reference to multiple “balances” on the Day of Judgment as affirming differentiated standards of evaluation rather than a monolithic criterion. Al-Qaradāghī further links the absence of such regulating balances to contemporary phenomena such as extremism, sectarianism, and juridical severity, which often arise from conflating distinct domains, including creed and politics, worship and custom, or war and peace. The article also outlines the five structural pillars of Fiqh al-Mīzān - the evaluator, the object evaluated, knowledge of the relevant scale, commitment to domain-specific assessment, and accurate determination of relative weights - through which the framework seeks to cultivate a balanced juristic disposition capable of addressing complexity, diversity, and change without compromising fidelity to revelation, and concludes by highlighting its practical implications for mitigating Muslim disunity, ideological polarisation, and the misuse of religious texts in political conflict, thereby presenting Fiqh al-Mīzān as a significant methodological contribution to contemporary Islamic thought.

Amina Inloes (The Islamic College) Meteors in the Qur'an 

Several passages in the Qur’an speak about shooting stars – specifically, shooting stars bombarding shayāṭīn (evil spirits) – but it is not obvious from the text why. While the dominant interpretation is that the meteor passages are intended to assert that the Qur’an is an authentic divine revelation, this interpretation still does not explain why meteors are used for this purpose. Some authors (Crone, Hawting, et al.) argue for pre-Islamic roots of the meteor passages, particularly in Judaism, Zoroastrianism, and mystical Christian writings. Others argue that belief in meteors striking shayāṭīn may have been a pre-Islamic Arab myth which the Qur’an endorsed for rhetorical reasons. Here, I argue instead that the meteor passages may actually have been an answer to an implied question among the Companions due to unusual meteor activity in 7th-century Arabia, which is mentioned in several Muslim chronicles. However, rather than merely borrowing existing regional ideas about meteors and the cosmos, the Qur’an engages in an implicit dialogue with them, to present its own unique theology - similar to how the Qur’an engages with other regional cosmological notions - and to assuage any concerns that these meteors were ill portents.

Muhammad Faisal Khalil (University of Oxford) Sūrat al-Baqarah: Redactional Layering or Prophetic Dramaturgy? An Apocalyptic-Stage Stylometric Adjudication 

A lineage of form-critical scholarship from Nöldeke through Bell to Sinai treats Sūrat al-Baqarah’s stylistic variance as evidence of editorial surgery. This paper proposes an alternative that requires no such conjecture. The compositional seams are not diachronic layering but stage-coded rhetoric within the Prophetic Apocalypse framework I advance from the Farāhī-Iṣlāḥī-Ghāmidī tradition. This is the covenantal drama unfolding across five stages from revelation to reckoning, each carrying a distinct rhetorical register. Discourse style tracks moral exposure (the audience’s position within these stages) rather than chronology. Short, rhythmic warnings recur in Medina because new interlocutors (hypocrites and Israelites) re-enter the revelatory stage of indhār (warning). The prologue (vv. 1–39) functions as indhār-stage recapitulation. The Israelite polemic (vv. 40–123) enacts itmām-e-ḥujjat (completion of proof). The Abraham/qiblah pivot (vv. 124–152) marks barāʾat (disavowal). The legal corpus (vv. 153–283) tracks hijrat/barāʾat (emigration/disavowal), equipping a community to execute God’s this-worldly reckoning. The epilogue (vv. 284–286) seals the covenant as jazā-o-sazā (recompense/punishment). Baqarah is not a passive archive; it is an active proof-dossier, the documentary ḥujjat for this-worldly judgment. Nicolai Sinai reads these same features as redactional layering. In forthcoming work on Baqarah, part of a wider reappraisal of the ‘Seven Long Ones’, he posits that it absorbed two originally independent sūrahs. The first is a late-Meccan source (tentatively named Sūrat al-Andād) split and grafted as an envelope around the original nucleus. The second is a Medinan martial tract (Sūrat al-Ṣabr). Where Sinai sees Meccan material surgically relocated, I read indhār-stage recapitulation; where he posits a separate absorbed text, I read hijrat/barāʾat. He reconstructs Q 2:102 (Hārūt and Mārūt) as three superimposed editorial layers. Yet elsewhere, Sinai defends the Qurʾān as a dīwān (conservative archive), invoking Ockham’s Razor to reject source-critical complexity generally. He concedes that his Baqarah reconstruction involves inevitable conjecture. These tensions open space for a different test. Meccan and Medinan remain valid categories, but they are insufficient as the sole units of analysis; apocalyptic stage and audience must be added. I advance a genre-controlled stylometric protocol. Each verse-group is classified by stage and audience, and verse-length variance is compared across stages. If anomalies dissolve when indexed by stage, the data point to prophetic dramaturgy rather than the hands of later editors. The significance is an empirically adjudicable entry into a genuinely open debate, a demonstration that synchronic literary-compositional categories can address the same textual phenomena that motivate diachronic redaction hypotheses.

Saeid Sobhani (Islamic college of London) The Glorification of All Beings in the Qurʾān: A Theological and Philosophical Study of Tasbīḥ 

The glorification of all beings has its roots in religious teachings, and numerous Qurʾānic verses explicitly affirm that all created things—both sentient and non-sentient—engage in the glorification of God. In the Qurʾān, the glorification of beings is expressed through various formulations. At times, it is presented as a universal phenomenon, affirming that all beings glorify God. At other times, the Qurʾān refers explicitly or implicitly to the glorification of the angels, stating that they continually glorify their Lord with praise and thanksgiving. Elsewhere, the Qurʾān speaks of the glorification performed by the birds of the sky, thunder, and mountains. Accordingly, the entire cosmos is permeated with the murmuring of glorification, and every being is, in its own manner, engaged in the praise of God. Despite the clarity of the Qurʾānic assertions, a central problem remains unresolved: what is the true nature of this glorification? How do beings such as mountains, birds, thunder, or other entities traditionally understood as lacking conscious awareness engage in tasbīḥ? This question has generated divergent interpretations among Qurʾānic exegetes, theologians, and Islamic philosophers, ranging from literal understandings to metaphorical or ontological explanations.
In this paper, I present the views of Mulla Sadra on the Qur’anic concept of the glorification of all beings in the Qur’an. Mulla Sadra attempted to prove his views through aql, philosophy, and teachings of irfan (mysticism). I evaluate them vis-à-vis the views of classical scholars to show how Sadra’s reading of these verses provides a superior explanation of the meaning of this often-debated Qur’anic phrase

Authority, Community, and Visibiltiy in Shiʿi and Alevi Contexts (Room 221)

Chair: Uzair Ibrahim (Univeristy of Exeter)

Carlos Mendez (University of Edinburgh) The Growing Mediated Visibility of Shi`ism and the (Co)Construction of a Renewed Shi`i Publicness 

Over the past two decades, Shiʿi Islam has become more visible as a world religion and the Shiʿi Muslim community a more recognisable and assertive demographic minority. This paper theorises the growing visibility of Shiʿism at the onset of the 21st century and critically analyses this visibility as a mediated and socially constructed process. Drawing on Norbert Elias’ radically processual and radically relational sociology, it interprets the mediated visibility of Shiʿism in relation to the (co)construction of a renewed Shiʿi publicness in the making and to unintended processes of socioreligious change. The mediated visibility of Shiʿism and the (co)construction of a renewed Shiʿi publicness are analysed here at the crossroads of two key developments: the processual liberation and transnationalisation of the Arab heartlands of Shiʿism in Iraq following the historical disruption of 2003, and the manner in which Shi`ism is being mediatised to suite the global market of world religions.

Hossein Mousavi (Royal Holloway, University of London)  Were Shi’i Clerics Eurocentric in the 1920s? A Hermeneutic Challenge to the Definition of Eurocentrism in the Social Sciences 

This article argues that the prevailing definition of Eurocentrism in the social sciences relies on problematic theoretical assumptions that pre-emptively determine non-Western intellectual agency. While a strand of social science literature defines Eurocentrism as a belief in a “standard of civilisation” that Westerners are “superior” to fulfil than non-Westerners, this article identifies a critical flaw in that very framework. Applying Paul Ricœur’s hermeneutic principles, I demonstrate that this definition would paradoxically classify two 1920s Iranian Shi’i clerical figures—one a high-ranking senior mujtahid and the other a middle-ranking religious reformist—as “Eurocentric.” The article proceeds in three stages: first, it critiques the definition of Eurocentrism found in historical sociology through hermeneutic principles; second, it provides an interpretation of how these two clerics understood modernity and “Western achievements”; and finally, it concludes that labelling their perspectives as “Eurocentric” is theoretically untenable. In doing so, the article exposes the conceptual flaws embedded in the definition of Eurocentrism and demonstrates why a hermeneutic reading of non-Western texts could be a genuine inclusive approach when studying the historical texts of Muslim scholars.

Ufuk Erol (Leibniz Institute of European History) Producing Religious Authority: Sayyid Families, Genealogies and the Making of Alevi Religious Leadership 

This paper examines the historical role of sayyid families and their genealogies in the formation, reproduction, and transmission of religious authority in Alevism. Constituting 15–20 percent of contemporary Turkey, which is a Sunni-majority country, Alevis and their Twelver-Imamate Sufi belief, Alevism, have long been topics of debate and controversy. While often deemed as heresy in the early modern Ottoman Empire, Alevism has been subjected to modern reductionism in twentieth-century Turkey, labelled as a folkloric belief. Despite the growing number of studies in the last decades, particularly on modern socio-political and identity issues of the Alevis, Alevism as a religious belief has yet to be analysed from a historical perspective. This paper contributes to the understanding of Alevism in the early modern period by analysing how Alevi sayyid families, who are called ocak in vernacular Turkish and constitute the religious leadership of Alevi communities, and their genealogies shaped the nature of religious authority among Alevi communities. The paper uses ijazas, shajaras and relevant hagiographical documents as its sources to explore how religious authority was defined, granted, reproduced, and transmitted among the members of Alevi sayyid families in the early modern period. These sources were issued at various Sufi religious centres, such as Karbala, Ardabil, and the town of Hadji Bektash in central Anatolia. The documents received from the Sufi lodges in this vast geography demonstrate 1) the significance attributed to these places as centres of religious authority and 2) how the translocal networks of Alevi sayyid families played a role in the reproduction and transmission of religious authority among family members. Examining both the content and spatial dimensions of the above-mentioned sources, this paper analyses the formation and maintenance of religious authority in Alevism.

British Muslim Experiences of Inclusion, Exclusion, and Solidarity (ACR) 

Chair: Haroon Sidat (Cardiff University)

Tasnim Idriss (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) Islamophobia on Social Media in the UK: Discursive Dynamics and Muslim Responses on X during the 2023 Gaza War 

The 2023 Gaza War triggered intensified Islamophobic discourse across UK media platforms, with social media - particularly X - serving as a hub where political actors, mainstream media, and grassroots voices converged. This paper examines how Islam and Muslims were represented on X in relation to the Gaza War, and how these narratives intersected with the experiences and responses of UK Muslims. By focusing on X, the study captures a platform where discursive authority, moral framing, and community agency are produced, circulated, and contested. While the analysis centers on X, content originating on other platforms is considered when reposted or debated, reflecting broader circulation dynamics.
Employing a qualitative, interpretive approach, the paper analyzes high-salience Gaza-related content on X, including posts by political actors, mainstream media, and Muslim activists or community organizations. The analysis explores the construction of Islamophobic frames, moral binaries, and securitization narratives, alongside counter-narratives, acts of resistance, and expressions of solidarity. Platform-level dynamics, such as moderation policies and amplification mechanisms, are also considered to understand how algorithmic features shape the visibility and circulation of Islamophobic content.
In addition, the study draws on publicly available statements and published reactions by prominent British Muslim figures who engaged with Gaza-related discourse on X. These voices are approached as an analytically useful proxy for examining how an articulate and highly visible segment of Muslim communities interprets and responds to shifts in Islamophobic discourse. While such figures are often treated in public and media discourse as representative of Muslim communities, this paper does not make claims of empirical or demographic representativeness. It examines how influential individuals and organizations - such as activists, journalists, and community representatives - mediate, contest, and reframe dominant narratives, shaping counter-discourses and public-facing responses during periods of heightened geopolitical tension. This study situates the UK case within the broader Anglophone media ecosystem, emphasizing the circulation of Islamophobic narratives and the production of moral meaning in social media spaces. Findings highlight how Islamophobia is normalized, challenged, and reconfigured, while foregrounding Muslim agency in shaping counter-narratives. By examining the discursive production of Islamophobia during a crisis, this paper contributes to scholarship at the intersection of genocide studies, Islamophobia studies, media studies, and minority Muslim experiences in the UK. It underscores social media as a morally and politically charged public space, where representations of minority communities are contested and reshaped, offering critical insights into contemporary dynamics of discrimination, resistance, and solidarity.

Iman Dawood (London School of Economics & Political Science) Forging 'Unity' in Times of Peril: British Muslim Activism in the Era of Far-Right Politics 

British Muslims have increasingly become targets of far-right riots, media scapegoating, and governmental hostility (Jones et al., 2019; Jones, 2021; Reuters, 2024). Indeed, while the UK government claims to counter far-right extremism, it has simultaneously adopted increasingly repressive measures against Muslim civil society—outlawing Palestine protests, banning Muslim organizations as "extremist," and restricting civic participation. These shifting political realities have generated profound anxieties about the future of the British Muslim community, a community that has historically been fragmented by internal polemics and disputes that have hindered collective action. The past five years—and particularly the two years following October 7th—have, however, witnessed British Muslim activists coming together in cross-community organizations and forming unprecedented coalitions in pursuit of unity and resistance. Organisations such as the British Board of Scholars and Imams, media outlets such as 5Pillars, and institutions such as the Centre for Intra-Muslim studies are all examples of these efforts. Drawing on in-depth interviews with British Muslim activists and participant observation within cross-community spaces, this paper examines these emerging collaborative efforts, outlining their contribution to the formation of new cross-community alliances, and examining how these collaborations transform traditional boundaries of activism and foster shared forms of resistance. It reveals the lived experiences and realities motivating this ‘new’ activism and points to its successes but also the tensions this activism has engendered. This paper contributes to our understanding of British Muslim political and civic engagement, minority activism in an era of ascendant far-right politics, and collective action.

Muhammed Tajri (Al-Mahdi Institute) The Practitioners' Predicament – Challenges in Caring for Clients on the Shia-LGB Nexus 

This presentation offers findings from a qualitative study exploring the challenges faced by Twelver Shīʿa Muslim care providers, when responding to issues related to same-sex attraction and LGB identities within Muslim community contexts. While existing scholarship has increasingly recognised the importance of chaplaincy and pastoral care for Muslim populations, focused attention on Shīʿa Muslim care provision remains limited. This study addresses that gap by examining how Shīʿa practitioners - often positioned as first points of contact - navigate the intersection of mental health, religious ethics, and emerging LGB-related concerns. The research builds on earlier qualitative work that examined the lived experiences of Shīʿa Muslims experiencing same-sex attraction, which highlighted acute mental health vulnerabilities linked to stigma, isolation, and fear of communal exclusion. The present study shifts analytical focus toward practitioners themselves, investigating how imams, shaykhs, chaplains, psychiatrists, pastoral mentors, community workers, and allied health professionals manage and negotiate these encounters. Using qualitative methods, the study reveals a range of ethical and practical dilemmas faced by practitioners. Participants reported tension between the Islamic obligation of nahy ʿan al-munkar (preventing immoral conduct) and immediate safeguarding responsibilities, particularly in cases involving potential self-harm. Many described feeling ill-equipped to address complex mental health needs, citing limited formal training, absence of safeguarding infrastructures, and lack of institutional support within Shīʿa community settings. While psychotherapy and chaplaincy are regulated professions, the unregulated nature of the imam’s role emerged as a critical structural vulnerability. The findings further demonstrate a divergence in practitioner approaches: religiously trained scholars tended to prioritise doctrinal frameworks, while clinically trained practitioners adopted client-centred models of care. Although some promising hybrid models exist - such as practitioners trained in both Islamic studies and mental health, and institutional collaborations with Muslim healthcare professionals - these remain isolated and unevenly distributed across diaspora contexts. The presentation argues that reliance on purely normative religious responses is insufficient and, in some cases, harmful. It calls for formalised training pathways, safeguarding procedures, and interdisciplinary collaboration to support Shīʿa Muslim practitioners in providing religiously grounded, ethically adequate, and psychologically informed care. More broadly, the study positions LGB-related pastoral encounters as an emergent lens through which longstanding deficiencies in Muslim community mental health provision are becoming increasingly visible.

Muhammad Abbasi (Royal Holloway University of London) Legal Status of Unregistered Muslim Marriages (Nikāḥ) under English law 

This paper examines how judges of English courts treat unregistered religious-only marriages, particularly Muslim marriages (nikāḥ), within the formal system of marital recognition. It analyses how judges have approached nikāḥ-based unions under the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973, distinguishing between valid, void, and non-qualifying ceremonies. Drawing on leading judicial authorities from the 1960s to 2025, the study traces the evolution of judicial reasoning from questions of formality and jurisdiction to issues of human rights, gender equality, and community autonomy. It argues that English law’s insistence on formal registration has produced a dual system—one that privileges state-sanctioned forms of Anglican Christian and civil marriages while leaving other religious-only unions without legal protection. The paper concludes that the challenge is not merely one of doctrinal classification but of reconciling multiple legal norms within a secular framework that aspires to equality, certainty, and respect for religious identity.

16.00-16.30: Refreshments

16.30-18.00: Closing Keynote Session

Islamic Literary Heritage at the Institute of Ismaili Studies (ACR)

Dr Nourmamadcho Nourmamadchoev and Dr. Karim Javan (Ismaili Special Collections Unit The Institute of Ismaili Studies, London)

An opportunity to view some of the stunning manuscripts held by the Institute for Ismaili Studies with specialist insight from colleagues at the IIS Special Collections Unit.