Annual Conference of the British Association for Islamic Studies
Monday 30 June - Tuesday 1 July 2025
Old Divinity School, St John's College, University of Cambridge
Conference Programme
Day 1: Monday 30 June
09.15-10.00: Arrivals, Registration and Refreshments
10.00-11.20: Opening Keynote Panel Sponsored by Islamic Courses and the Centre for Islamic Knowledge (Main Lecture Theatre):
The Khaldunian Dialectic: Between Power and Morality
Professor Syed Farid Alatas (National University of Singapore)
Professor Recep Şentürk (Hamad Bin Khalifa University)
Chair: Professor Amira Bennison (University of Cambridge)
11.20-11.30: BRAIS - Prize Announcement
Dr Saeko Yazaki (University of Glasgow)
11.30 – 12.00: Refreshments
12.00-13.30: Panel Session 1
Text, Technology, and Tradition: Leveraging Digital Methods in Islamic Research (Teaching Room 1)
Chair: Serena Tolino (University of Bern)
Sefer Korkmaz (University of Bern) In pursuit of Jerusalem’s jurisprudential pearls: A digital analysis of the Jerusalem sijjils
Ilyes Mechentel (University of Bern) TraIL: Reframing labour and gender in Islamicate legal traditions through history and digital innovation
Tuba Nur Saraçoğlu (Mardin Artuklu University) Network analysis for the Islamic book history: A cooperative study on Ibn Hishām and Ibn Sa’d
Ahmet Faruk Çelik (Bolu Abant Izzet Baysal University) The use of Artificial Intelligence Methods in the Comparison of Ottoman Fatwa Collections
Ḥanbalī Theology and Kalām (Teaching Room 2)
Chair: Arjan Post (KU Leuvan)
Muzzammil Ahmad (KU Leuvan) Rethinking Tradition: Al-Qāḍī Abū Yaʿlā & the Development of Ḥanbalī Kalām
Rashid Khan (KU Leuven) Theology in Transition: Ibn Ḥamdān (d. 695/1296) and the Crystallization of Ḥanbalī Kalām
Nazir Khan (University of Nottingham) Ibn Taymiyya’s Theocentric Axiology
Arjan Post (KU Leuvan) Apocalyptic Elitism: Ḥanbalī Theology under the Mamluks
Conceptual Approaches to Gaza: Decoloniality, Solidarity, and Theologies of Resisting Genocide (Main Lecture Theatre)
Chair: Usaama Al-Azami (Hamad Bin Khalifa University)
Kholoud Al Ajarma (University of Edinburgh) Acts of solidarity: Scottish activism and football fandom in response to the Gaza genocide
Asif Khanan (University of Edinburgh) The theology of resistance: Yusuf al-Qaradawi on the occupation of Palestine
Rahma Bavelaar; Siham Ettijani (University of Amsterdam) Intersecting racisms: Documenting anti-Palestinian racism and Islamophobia in the Netherlands after October, 2023
Islam in the age of Artificial Intelligence: Challenges, Opportunities and Boundaries (Lightfoot Room)
Chair: Mansur Ali (Cardiff University)
Nadia Naim (Aston University) Islamic finance innovation utilising intellectual property and Artificial Intelligence
Mariam Al Attar (American University of Sharjah) What distinguishes humans from AI robots? An Islamic perspective
Safaruk Chowdhury (Cambridge Muslim College) The Qur’an’s challenges (tahhaddi) in the age of GPT: Can AI pass the test?
Muhammad Abbasi (Royal Holloway University of London) Generative AI and Islamic inheritance law: Integrating timeless tradition with cutting-edge innovation
From Codification to Courtroom: Islamic Law Across Cultures (Arthur Quiller Room)
Chair: Haroon Sidat (Cardiff University)
Muneer Abduraof (University of Western Cape) An analysis of the application of the Islamic law of compulsory succession in South Africa
Martin Eidrup (University of Gothenburg) From ambiguity to rejection: How Swedish courts construct meaning in cultural translation of Mahr
Fatima Essop (Muslim Family Law Hub) Between Faskh and civil law: South Africa’s 2024 Divorce Amendment Act as a gateway to Muslim women’s economic justice
13.30-14.30: Lunch
14.30-16.00: Panel Session 2
Micro-history and Global Shi`ism: Agency and Identity in a Trans-local Religious Community (Teaching Room 1)
Chair: Abid Zaidi (University of Oxford)
Siti Sarah Muwahidah (University of Edinburgh) Exploring Shi`i (Micro)Histories: Methodological Challenges in Southeast Asia
Christopher Cooper-Davies (University of Oxford) Understanding the Global Shi`i Revival of the Mid-Twentieth Century: the Case of Mohamad Jawad Chirri
Jaffer A. Mirza (King's College London) Beyond the Ulama: Grassroots Contributions to Twelver Shi`a Islam in Britain (1945–1980)
Abid Zaidi (University of Oxford) An Imam in Exile: the impact of Ayatollah Khomeini’s displacement (1965 – 1978) on trans-local institutions and channels of Shi`i clerical authority
Between Namus and Haq: Muslim Women’s Challenges to Exclusion (Lightfoot Room)
Chair: Vrinda Narain (McGill University)
Ahmad Ghouri (University of Sussex) Female Authority in Fatwa Practices
Homa Hoodfar (Concordia University) Iran’s Gender Battleground: Hijab Laws and Collective Rebellion
Vrinda Narain (McGill University) The Politics of Love: India’s Anti Love-Jihad Campaign
Fatemeh Sadegi (UCL) Between Honour and Obedience: Women and Gender in the Constituent Moments in Muslim Contexts
Hadith Hermeneutics, Function, and Impact in Muslim Conceptions of Prophecy: An Exploration Across History and Genre (Teaching Room 2)
Chair: Besnik Sinani (Tubingen University)
Belal Alabbas (Cambridge Muslim College) Bimā Arāka Allāh: al-Dārimī on hadith vs raʾy
Besnik Sinani (Tubingen University) Writing the Correct Sīra: Nāṣir al-Dīn al-Albānī’s (1914–1999) Modern Sīra Critique and Sunna Epistemology
Hossam Ouf (Tubingen University) Controversial Hadiths, Hermeneutics, and the Images of the Prophet: Tensions in Islamic Theology
Hina Khalid (University of Cambridge) The Iridescent Jewel of Time and Eternity: Muhammad Iqbal’s Elaboration of the Prophet Muhammad
Comparative Theologies and Cultural Exchanges Across the Islamicate (Main Lecture Theatre)
Chair: Fozia Bora (University of Leeds)
Eva Momtaz (University of Birmingham) Literary representations of Eve: Qur’anic vs. Miltonic
Abdulla Galadari (Khalifa University) Understanding the ‘ma’idah’: Qur’anic echoes of early Christian traditions
Nicola Carpentieri (University of Padua) Islamicate roots of Italian lyric: on the function of the love lyric in medieval Sicily
Martin Whittingham (University of Oxford) Delayed Reaction: Criticism of the Bible in 'The Cultured Man’s Gift' by ‘Abd Allāh al-Tarjumān (d. c. 827-834/1424-30) and the Gift's Afterlife in the Ottoman empire and Beyond
Children’s Rights and the Protection of the Child in Islamic Law: Perspectives from the Qur’an and Fiqh (Arthur Quiller Room)
Chair: Justin Jones (University of Oxford)
Muhammad Faisal Khalil (University of Oxford) The child as central moral patient: Monotheism, covenant and law in Islam
Shaheen Sardar Ali (University of Warwick) Exploring child-friendly interpretations of the ‘adoption’ verses in the Qur’an
Mouez Khalfaoui (University of Tübingen) Islamic legal debate over child marriage: Revisiting marginalised opinions
Justin Jones (University of Oxford) Wilayat-al-nikah: Reappraising the marital guardian in contemporary jurisprudence
16.00-16.30: Refreshments
16.30-18.00: Panel Session 3
Non-violence, State-violence and Political Agency in Islamic Thought (Teaching Room 1)
Chair: Richard McNeil-Willson (University of Edinburgh)
Tom Woerner-Powel (University of Manchester) Message, meaning and martyrdom in Islamic nonviolence
Sophia Butt (University of Birmingham) Theologies of Resistance
Aseel Azab (Brown University) Muslim agency rethought: Egyptian Islamism from tamkin (empowerment) to Istid’af (disempowerment)
Muhammad el-Fiky (Georgetown University) Authority under control: The Shura’a and state-sanctioned violence in Fatimid Egypt
Bio-Bibliographical Works as Sources for the Social and Intellectual History of Shiʿism (Teaching Room 2)
Chair: Haidar Hobballah (Al-Mahdi Institute)
Mostafa Movahedifar (International Centre for Advanced Islamic Research) Rijāl or Fihrist? Addressing a Misconception about Rijāl al-Najāshī
Adam Ramadhan (Leiden University) The Imāmī Imāms and their Non-Imāmī ‘Companions’ in Bio-Bibliographical Works
Alexander Khaleeli (International Centre for Advanced Islamic Research) Beyond the Safavid Watershed: Written Culture and the Development of Shiʿism in Pre-Modern Iran
Religious Authority in Islam: Key Figures and Debates in Contemporary Muslim Thought (Lightfoot Room)
Chair: Hadize Kere Abdulrahman (University of Lincoln)
Essam Ayyad (Qatar University) Talking ‘authority’: A critique of student-shaykh dynamics in medieval Islamic learning
Mohamud Awil Mohamed (University of Pennsylvania) Sufi-Salafi Rivalries and the Construction of Authority in The Somali diaspora
Mansur Ali (Cardiff University) Sherman Jackson’s ‘The Islamic Secular’ between Ibāḥa Aṣliyya and Zāhiriyya: an exploration of various models of the Shariah
Rezart Beka (Hamad bin Khalifa University) Abdulla bin Bayyah (b. 1935) and neo-traditionalism: A critical evaluation
British Islam: Power, Praxis and the Politics of Identity (Main Lecture Theatre)
Chair: Alyaa Ebbiary (Lancaster University)
Riyaz Timol (Cardiff University) Intergenerational Transmission in the British Imamate: A data-driven analysis
Iman Dawood (University of Cambridge) Identities in flux: British Muslims’ shifting relationships with/to transnational Islamic movements
Said Mahatir (University College London) Pocket of urban religious territoriality: Mapping Muslim territories in multicultural London
Imad Ahmed (University of Cambridge) Moon Wars! The Islamic calendar between contestation and consensus in the UK
Orality, Authority and Method: Reassessing Early Hadith Scholarship (Arthur Quiller Room)
Chair: Haroon Sidat (Cardiff University)
Oumama Hamasha (University of Jordan) Al-Bukhārī and al-Maghāzī: A Novel Perspective on His Ṣaḥīḥ
Hany Rashwan (United Arab Emirates University) The oral nature of Hadith and early Islamic literary criticism
Feyza Goren (Cardiff University) Al-Sarakhsī's Ḥadīth Methodology in Al-Mabsūṭ
20.00-22.00: Conference Dinner: Sidney Sussex College, Sidney Street, Cambridge CB2 3HU.
A group will depart from the conference venue at 19:45.
Day 2: Tuesday 1 July
09.15-10.00: Arrivals, Registration and Refreshments
10.00-11.30: Panel Session 4
New Perspectives on Muslim Foodways (Teaching Room 1)
Chair: Stefan Williamson Fa (University of Cambridge)
Stefan Williamson Fa (University of Cambridge) Food encounters: Muslim food-aid initiatives and inter-religious entanglements in Britain
Shaheed Tayob (Stellenbosch University) Food as mediating sustenance (rizq), barakat (blessing/bounty), and fate (naseeb): Ramzaan as an economy of food and goods in Muslim Mumbai
Su Hyeon Cho (University of Oxford) Edible prayers: Sacrifices and votive meals among the Alawites in post-earthquake Turkey
Just Struggles: Resistance and Liberation in Islamic Thought (Teaching Room 2)
Chair: Sharaiz Chaudhry (University of Edinburgh)
Arif Rabbani (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) ‘Stand Firm for Justice’: The role of the Ulama and madrasa students in the July 2024 uprising in Bangladesh
Sharaiz Chaudhry (University of Edinburgh) ‘Unity of the Fields’: Towards a Post-Sectarian Islamic Theology
Abdelrahman Ayyash (The Century Foundation) Beyond the battlefield: The cultural and political mainstreaming of Palestinian resistance
The Qur’an as the Ultimate Authority: Text, Law, Agency and Tradition (Arthur Quiller Room)
Chair: Mustapha Sheikh (University of Leeds)
Haris Lloyd (University of Leeds) A hybrid approach to Tafsir al-Qu’an bil-Qur’an through thematic induction and syllogistic analysis
Sitara Akram (University of Leeds) Optimal justice and the trajectory of revealed social laws: An outline of the Qur’an’s legislative roadmap
Sofia Rehman (University of Leeds) Aisha, Mother of the Believers and Hadith Master: A Hermeneutics of the Prophetic Tradition
Celestial Realms: Theological Reflections on the Supernatural in Islam (Main Lecture Theatre)
Chair: Omar Anchassi (University of Bern)
Amina Inloes (The Islamic College) Extraterrestrial life and human superiority in Shi’I Hadith
Shoaib Malik (University of Edinburgh) Adamic exceptionalism vindicated: The case of Jinn and humans
Haroon Sidat (Cardiff University) Angelic ontology and the Deobandi maslak: Tradition, pedagogy and adaptation in modernity
Sufism in the West: Problematising Universality, Authority and Authenticity (Lightfoot Room)
Chair: Saeko Yazaki (University of Glasgow)
Mark Sedgwick (Aarhus University) The universalist exoticism of Inayat Khan: From Sufi to Prophet
Saeko Yazaki (University of Glasgow) The open approach of the Jewish Sufi-Zen teacher Samuel Lewis and his dances of universal peace
Kei Takahashi (Toyo University) Traditional Islam and the making of the third place in American Muslim community
11.30-12.00: Refreshments
12.00-13.30: Panel Session 5
Ḥanafī and Hadith School Formations in the 3rd/9th and 4th/10th Centuries (Athur Quiller Room)
Chair: Ramon Harvey (Cambridge Muslim College)
Salman Younas (Cambridge Muslim College) The Ḥanafī School in the 3rd/9th Century: The Life, Career, and Contributions of ʿĪsā b. Abān
Belal Alabbas (Cambridge Muslim College) Abū ʿĪsā al-Tirmidhī’s Life and Work
Ramon Harvey (Cambridge Muslim College) Adopted Son of Samarqand: Abū Salama, ‘Māturīdism’ and Popular Sunnī Ḥanafī Creed in 4th/10th Century Transoxiana
Interpreting the Divine: Exegesis, Intent and Theological Evolution (Teaching Room 1)
Chair: Jon Hoover (University of Nottingham)
Simon Loynes (University of Edinburgh) From esoteric communication to verbatim revelation: The conspicuous absence of the root w-h-y in the schematics of revelation in medieval tafsir
Aminah Patel (Cambridge Muslim College) Adam’s forgetfulness and prophetic impeccability: Unearthing theological insights in early Maturidi Tafsir
Aurangzeb Haneef (Lahore University of Management Sciences) Tafsir texts as lecture notes: Reassessing early Tafsir tradition through exegetical reports of Sufyan al-Thawri (d. 778 CE)
Abdud Dayyan Mohammad Younus (University of Birmingham) The evolution of Tafsir traditions in the Indian Subcontinent and the development of Qur’anic exegesis in regional languages
Media, Islamophobia and the Gaza War (Main Lecture Theatre)
Chair: Usaama Al-Azami (Hamad Bin Khalifa University)
Salman Al-Azami (Liverpool Hope University) British media’s coverage of Gaza: The absence of ethics and the propaganda model
Tasnim Idriss (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) Constructing the 'Other': Islamophobia and Representations of the Gaza War in Western Media
Arwa Ibrahim (Middle East Eye) Justifying genocide: Israeli media and the raid of a Gazan hospital
Usaama Al-Azami (Hamad Bin Khalifa University) Manufacturing Consent for Genocide: Western Media as Propaganda in the Gaza War
Reclaiming Agency: Muslim Liberation Theologies and Pathways to Transformation (Lightfoot Room)
Chair: Emin Poljarevic (University of Brunei)
Ivan Ejub Kostic (University of Belgrade) Islamic liberation theology in a European perspective: Towards socio-political liberation
Emin Poljarevic (University of Brunei) Islam as method: Ethics and liberation
Tamim Mobayed (University of Oxford) Feeling for God: Desecularising emotion
Ermin Sinanovic (Shenandoah University) Decolonising the future: Insights from an Islamic theology
Language, Authority, and Interpretation in Shīʿī Legal Theory (Teaching Room 2)
Chair: Wahid Amin (Al-Mahdi Institute)
Wahid Amin (Al-Mahdi Institute) Divine Speech Across Contexts: Shīʿī Uṣūlī Thought and Modern Philosophy of Language
Muhammed Tajri (Al-Mahdi Institute) The Evolution of Shīʿī Taqlīd: Tussle between Authority and Agency
Haidar Hobballah (Al-Mahdi Institute) The Theory of Sad al-Dharāʾiʿ in Imāmī Usul al-Fiqh: Analysis and Comparison
13.30-14.30: Lunch
14.30-16.00: Panel Session 6
The Politics of Gender in Muslim Thought and Practice (Main Lecture Theatre)
Chair: Alyaa Ebbiary (Lancaster University)
Hadize Kere Abdulrahman (University of Lincoln) (En)gendering gendered knowledge in Northern Nigeria’s Qur’anic schools: Women and girls, present yet ‘invisibilised’
Nicole Correri (Boston University) Special men: An affective theory analysis of the function of specialness in the construct of masculinity in contemporary Twelver Shi’ism
Karina Eileraas Karakus (University of California, Los Angeles) Hijabista influencers, digital disruptors: Fashioning national and religious belonging, women’s empowerment, Islamic capital and the new Turkish Muslimah elite on Instagram
Crossing Old Intellectual ‘Borderlands’, Exploring New ‘Frontiers’: The Case of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Beyond (Lightfoot Room)
Chair: Uzair Ibrahim (University of Exeter)
Timur Khan (Leiden University) A view of history and social critique from Durrani Peshawar: Mu’izzullah Mahmand and his Majmu’a al’Mamalik (c. 1750s-60s)
Murid Shah Nadiri (University of Oxford) Beyond the ‘No Man’s Land’: Islamic traditions and transregional networks in Badakhshan
Muntazir Ali (UNC Greensboro) Dūr and Frontier: Colonial Imaginations and Indigenous Spatialities in Nineteenth-Century Chitral
Dietrich Reetz (Free University Berlin) World-making from the margins: Muslim global actors from South Asia
Environmental Stewardship: Islamic Approaches to Environmental Challenges Across Time (Teaching Room 1)
Chair: Kholoud Al Ajarma (University of Edinburgh)
Hamide Elif Üzümcü (University of Edinburgh) Sufi narratives on environmental ethics in family life
Davide Pettinato (Univeristy of Cambridge) Human dignity and its relation to the natural world: exploring Muslim understandings through the concept of fiṭra
Sara Fadel (New Valley University) The procedural policies of Mamluk Sultans towards climate change and its impact on Egyptian society (648-923 AH/1250-1517 AD)
Sevcan Ozturk (Social Sciences University of Ankara) Future directions for Islamic ecotheology: Insights from Christian eco theological paradigms
Theorising and Enacting Muslim Selfhood, Critical Consciousness and Educational Dialogue to meet Contemporary Educational Challenges (Arthur Quiller Room)
Chair: Farah Ahmed (University of Cambridge)
Duaa Karim (University of Cambridge) Policy, Power, and Muslim Selfhood: The impact of securitisation on British Muslims in education
Usaama Javed Mirza (University of Cambridge) Islamic Scientific Critical Consciousness: a theoretical framework for Muslim science educators
Arwa Hanif Al-Qassim (University of Cambridge) Fostering Muslim student’s selfhood, critical inquiry and reflection through dialogic halaqah in UAE schools
Farah Ahmed (University of Cambridge) Problematising the shift towards educating for an Islamic worldview and presenting the dialogic Muslim-self as a more authentic educational goal
Arabia in Transition: Political and Cultural Shifts in the Contemporary Gulf (Teaching Room 2)
Chair: Tom Lea (University of Edinburgh)
Phillippe Thalmann (University of Cambridge) Whisperers of regret: conservatism and social change in Riyadh (Saudi Arabia)
Ghaneimah Al-Yammahi (United Arab Emirates University) Modern Arabo-Islamic multilingualism and cultural borrowing in the Gulf countries: Dubai as a case study
Lolwa Al-Jefairi (University of Cambridge) Political theology of governance in the 19th and 20th century Arabia
Mira Al Hussein (University of Edinburgh) The Gulf as a destination for Hijrah
16.00-16.30: Refreshments
16.30-18.00: Closing Keynote Panel:
'Digital British Islam: How do Cyber Islamic Environments impact everyday life'
Professor Gary Bunt (University of Wales Trinity Saint David)
Professor Sariya Cheruvallil-Contractor (Coventry University)
Dr Sadek Hamid (University of Edinburgh/University of Wales Trinity Saint David)
Dr Laura Jones (University of Edinburgh/University of Wales Trinity Saint David)
Learn more about the Digital British Islam research project here: www.digitalbritishislam.com