Publisher: Edinburgh University Press

Publication Date: June 2020

Examines the development of Muslim theological, legal, literary and cultural discussions about violence and its legitimation

The violent conquest of the eastern part of the lands under Muslim rule by the Mongols marked a new period in the history of Islamic civilization and in attitudes towards violence. This volume examines the various intellectual and cultural reactions of Muslim thinkers to these events, both within and without the territories subjected to Mongol control. Each chapter examines how violent acts were assessed by Muslim intellectuals, analyzing both changes and continuity within Islamic thought over time.

Each chapter is structured around a case study in which violent acts are justified or condemned, revealing the variety of attitudes to violence in the medieval period.

Key Features

• Examines the portrayal of violence in a variety of Muslim intellectual contexts (historical, philosophical, theological, legal, literary, artistic)

• Employs a broad understanding of violence – from warfare between Muslims (and between Muslims and others) to individual acts of violence

• Enables a better-informed debate about the nature of violence in Islamic thought, and how the positions developed in early Islam were both used and abandoned by later writers

• Positions these classical conceptions of violence and its justification in Islamic thought in the broader methodological debate over violence and its relationship with religious thought

About the Authors

Robert Gleave was Director of the Legitimate and Illegitimate Violence Project 2010-2013, and is Professor of Arabic Studies at the University of Exeter. He specializes in Islamic legal theory (uṣūl al-fiqh) and Shīʿī legal thought. His most recent publications include Islam and Literalism: Literal Meaning and Interpretation in Islamic Legal Theory (EUP, 2012).

István Kristó-Nagy is a Lecturer in Arab and Islamic Studies at the University of Exeter. He is the author of La pensée d’Ibn al-Muqaffaʽ (2013).

Source: Edinburgh University Press

Funded by HERA (Humanities in the European Research Area)

Under the “USES OF THE PAST” Program

Date: 1 September 2016 – 31 October 2018

Project Website: www.usppip.eu

Much modern Muslim thought, particularly around legal issues, is characterized by an emulation of past perfection, and a dissatisfaction with an imperfect present. Muslim communities and movements (be they radical and violent or liberal and progressive) usually frame their programs for change as attempts to preserve, revive and recapture the belief and practice of the past Muslim community. From terrorism which claims to be Islamic (most recently the emergence of Islamic State and the Charlie Hebdo attacks) to the European Sharī`a law debates, the need for a greater understanding of the pivotal role of historical precedent in the construction of contemporary Muslim thinking is clear. It is this need the Understanding Sharī`a Project aims to address.

The participants, all internationally recognized experts in the study of Islamic law, will create a research base and draw on an international networks of expertise. They will also engage in activities whereby this knowledge can be disseminated to a wider, non-academic audience (including both those within and outside of the Muslim community). Understanding the importance of the perceptions of the past, and the authority drawn from precedent for current Muslim thought and practice is too often misunderstood within the academic community (viewing it sometimes as ‘blind imitation’ of the past), but more crucially amongst policy makers and the general public. This project aims to make a contribution to raising the level of public debate around these issues by emphasizing the creative and future-orientation of modern Muslim understandings of the past.

This two year project addresses how Muslim legal scholars have used the idea of a perfect past to try and change the imperfect present.  Islamic legal thought has always stressed the importance of previous example – legal scholars often refer to the “example of the Prophet” or “established tradition or custom” to justify a rule. This project focuses on these uses of the past, and tries to show how they are changing and how the past is being used to support legal change and reform in contemporary Muslim discourse.

Funded by HERA (Humanities in the European Research Area) under their “Uses of The Past” program, the project team includes scholars in the Universities of Exeter, Leiden, Göttingen and Bergen and examines the uses of the past in the areas of violence, custom, gender and the state.

The project is a collaboration of four institutions: the Universities of Exeter, Leiden, Göttingen and Bergen, and in each institution an established academic (Gleave, Buskens, Schneider and Vikør) works with a postdoctoral researcher; they meet for both academic and public events every six months (with each institution hosting at least one event), involving both academics and practitioners. Project members at each institution will explore one theme of Islamic law in the modern period; Exeter will focus on violence, Leiden on custom, Göttingen on gender and Bergen on the state.  Particular attention will be paid to the uses of the past; the ways in which the Islamic legal tradition is invoked, contested and appealed to in modern argument, how it is presented and whether patterns are discernible in its deployment and whether these patterns shift over time.

Project Lead

• Prof. Robert Gleave, University of Exeter

Events

• Governance and Violence in Islamic Law Workshop | November 24, 2017
• Maslaha, Siyasa and Good Governance: Shari’a and Society Workshop | April 19-20, 2018
• Islamic Law and Sex/uality Workshop | June 22, 2017
• Customs, Culture, Shari’a and National Law | February 24-25, 2017
• Ocean of Law II: Islamic Legal Crossings in the Indian Ocean World | December 12-14, 2016
• Workshop on the Imamate traditions in South Arabia | November 22, 2016

Contacts

• Email: usppip@exeter.ac.uk
• Website: http://www.usppip.eu/

Since that first conference, organized to attract submissions for the newly launched journal Islamic Law and Society, three more conferences had been organized by the same founding parents of the Leiden/Amsterdam conference, who were beginning to feel that they should not be monopolizing the choice of conference theme and location.

In May 2004, articles of organization were filed with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, effectively incorporating the International Society for Islamic Legal Studies. The statutory articles can be found in the Corporate Database (fill in the society’s name) at: www.sec.state.ma.us/cor/coridx.htm.

As of June 2012 the membership had grown to 83 members, from 47 at the time of the first Business Meeting in 2006. The next census-taking will be on the occasion of the fourth Business Meeting, convened at the Eighth ILS Conference in 2015. The website was launched in December 2007. ISILS is deeply appreciative of those members who contributed funds in addition to membership dues to make the website possible.

ISILS Membership Information

ISILS is open to all who are interested in the academic study of Islamic law. There are two classes of membership: regular and student. Student members must present evidence at the time of membership of full-time enrollment in an institution of higher learning.

Both types of membership include voting privileges at ISILS Business Meetings, which are held at every ILS conference; participation in member-only discussion forums on the website; and a reduced or waived fee for conference registration (depending on the agreement the ISILS Board has reached with the conference host institution). The membership fee of $75 (regular) / $40 (student) is for a period of three years. The present membership period runs from January 2017 through December 2019.

Past Conferences

• 8^th International Conference of the International Society for Islamic Legal Studies: “Islamic Law and Ethics”

Coinciding with the 6th Annual Conference of the Leiden University Centre for the Study of Islam and Society (LUCIS)

November 6-8, 2015 | Leiden, The Netherlands

• 7^th International Conference of the International Society for Islamic Legal Studies: “Islamic Law and the State”

Convened under the auspices of the Turkish Historical Association, Ankara

May 30, 2012 | Ankara, Turkey

Keynote Speech: Halil Inalcik (Bilkent University, Ankara)

• 6^th International Conference of the International Society for Islamic Legal Studies: “Islamic Law and Custom”

July 13-15, 2009 | University of Exeter, UK

Incorporated in 2004, ISILS is an international, non-profit, and non-political organization that aims to encourage scholarship on and to foster communication about Islamic law and related subjects. ISILS’s primary focus is the organization and convening of the Islamic Legal Studies (ILS) conferences, which are held triennially. ISILS is open to all who are interested in the academic study of Islamic law.

Executive Board

• President:

Peri Bearman, serena.tolino@gmail.com

• Secretary-Treasurer:

Robert Gleave, r.gleave@exeter.ac.uk

• Officers:

Samy Ayoub, sayoub@austin.utexas.edu

Evgenia Kermeli, ebussuud@gmail.com

Serena Tolino, serena.tolino@gmail.com

Contacts

ISILS can be reached at

c/o Rob Gleave, Secretary-Treasurer

Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter, Stocker Road, Exeter EX4 4ND, UK

Website: http://www.isils.net/

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