Islamic Reformulations was a three-year Global Uncertainties Leadership Fellowship (GULF), funded by Research Councils UK and administered by the Economic and Social Research Council. The Fellowship, awarded to Professor Robert Gleave of the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter, explored how Muslim thought has developed in the modern period, and how these modern developments relate to the pre-modern tradition of Islamic thought.  The project focused on the interlinked themes of belief, governance and violence.

Beginning in September 2012, Islamic Reformulations has now completed its main period of funding from the ESRC. We will maintain this website for a while, to link in impact activities and other events related to the project. The project continued and developed the LIVIT Project (Legitimate and Illegitimate Violence in Islamic Thought), which ran from 2010 to 2013, and was also funded under the RCUK Global Uncertainties program.

The project was led by Robert Gleave. The project’s full-time research fellow was Dr. Mustafa Baig, now lecturer in Islamic Studies in the Centre for the Study of Islam in the UK, Cardiff University.

Principal Investigator:

Robert Gleave is Professor of Arabic Studies at the University of Exeter. He researchers Islamic legal theory, and has worked most extensively on the Shia tradition of Muslim thought. He was director of the LIVIT (Legitimate and Illegitimate Violence in Islamic Thought) Project, which ran from 2010 to 2013, and with Dr. Istvan Kristo-Nagy he will be editing a series entitled Violence in Islamic Thought.

Research Fellow:

Dr. Mustafa Baig gained his PhD from the University of Manchester in 2012.  His interests principally lie in the study of Islamic jurisprudence in non-Muslim contexts, investigating how Islamic jurists – who predominantly addressed Muslims living under Muslim rule – discussed the ‘more exceptional’ cases of Muslims living in non-Muslim lands, and the legal and theological implications involved. As well as examining the classical literature on Muslims in non-Muslim jurisdictions, he is also interested in following new modern/ist discourses on Muslims in minority contexts.  While conducting his own research on themes connected to the Islamic Reformulations project, he will be working with Professor Robert Gleave to coordinate activities linked to the public agenda of the Project.

Website: Islamicreformulations.net