Archive for June, 2016

The Centre for Academic Shia Studies (CASS) is pleased to announce a weekly discussion event during the month of Ramadan. The discussions will be held at the Al-Khoei Foundation every weekend at 8.00 pm and will be followed by the breaking of the fast (iftar).

Saturday 11 June 2016: Arab Shi’as: Nationalism, Citizenship and Loyalty

Ranj Alaaldin, LSE

Jane Kinninmont, Chatham House

Ali Allawi, National University of Singapore

Saturday 18 June 2016: ISIS and the End of Times

Ayatollah Fadhil Milani, Imam Khoei Islamic Centre

Charles Tripp, School of Oriental and African Studies

Mina Al-Oraibi, Yale University

Saturday 25 June 2016: What is Shi’ism?

Ayatollah Fadhil Milani, Imam Khoei Islamic Centre

Amina Inloes, The Islamic College

Sajjad Rizvi, University of Exeter

Friday 1 July 2016: Militancy in Post-2003 Iraq

Luay Al-Khatteeb, Columbia University

Michael Stephens, Royal United Services Institute

Hayder Al-Khoei, Chatham House, CASS.

Kindly RSVP to events@shiaresearch.com

UCI urged to halt Bahraini-bankrolled WorldTour team over rights abuses

Zahir Bhalloo, “Judging the judge: Judicial competence in 19th century Iran”, Bulletin d’études orientales, 63 (2014), pp.275-293.

Abstract
This paper investigates the impact of the dominant Imāmī Šīʻī Uṣūlī doctrinal model in nineteenth century Iran of the jurist (muǧtahid) as arbiter (qāḍī al‑taḥkīm) on judicial practice. By drawing on a “litigant archive” from this period, I discuss one problem that emerged from the dominant doctrinal model. It became possible for litigants to challenge the binding force of a ḥukm by claiming they did not recognize the scholar who issued the ḥukm to be a muǧtahid and hence judicially competent. This ultimately forced Uṣūlī writers to come up with a juridical framework where one recognized muǧtahid would have to confirm the emergence of another one in cases where a scholar’s juristic qualifications (iǧtihād) were challenged. In practice, as I demonstrate, even if a scholar’s judicial competence as a muǧtahid was confirmed by another recognized muǧtahid, it was still no guarantee that the scholar’s ḥukm would be enforced.

Keywords
decentralization, judicial competence, qaḍāʼ, Uṣūlī, muǧtahid, judgement, Qājār, Iran.

Contested modernity: divided rule and the birth of sectarianism, nationalism, and absolutism in Bahrain

Shia Rights Watch

Seminar to Commemorate the Martyrdom of Imam Ali

SUNDAY 19th JUNE 2016 – 2:00 PM

VENUE – RUDOLF STEINER HOUSE

35 PARK ROAD, LONDON NW1 6XT

Opposite Mumtaz Restaurant

Tube station: Baker Street

Chair: Dr Gurdofarid Miskinzoda

Dr Gurdofarid Miskinzoda is Head of the Shiʿi Studies Unit in the Department of Academic Research and Publications at the Institute of Ismaili Studies. Gurdofarid is an Alumna of the Institute’s Graduate Programme in Islamic Studies and Humanities and the recipient of the Institute’s Doctoral Scholarship Programme. She received her BA in Oriental and African Studies (1998) and her MA in Arabic Studies (2000) from the Institute of Asian and African Countries of Lomonosov Moscow State University. Gurdofarid completed her studies with a PhD in the History of the Near and Middle East and Islam from SOAS, University of London (2007). Her thesis, entitled On the Margins of Sīra: Mughulta’i (689–762/1290–1361) and His Place in the Development of Sīra Literature focused on a work of Mughulta’i on the biography of the Prophet Muhammad. It also examined new trends in the understanding of sīra literature and some current issues of studying sīra as a genre of Muslim literary and historical tradition.

Dr. Reza Shah-Kazemi

Imam Ali’s Discourses to Kumayl

Dr. Reza Shah-Kazemi studied International Relations and Politics at Sussex and Exeter Universities before obtaining his PhD in Comparative Religion from the University of Kent in 1994. Formerly a Consultant to the Institute for Policy Research in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Dr Shah-Kazemi is at present a Research Fellow with the Department of Academic Research and Publications at the Institute of Ismaili Studies where he is Managing Editor of Encyclopaedia Islamica, the English translation and edition of the on-going multi-volume Persian Great Islamic Encyclopaedia (Da’irat al-Ma’arif-i Buzurg-i Islami). He has authored several works, including most recently The Spirit of Tolerance in Islam (IIS/IB Tauris, 2012); Spiritual Quest: Reflections on Qur’anic Prayer according to the teachings of Imam ‘Ali (IIS/IB Tauris, 2011); and Common Ground Between Islam and Buddhism (Fons Vitae, 2010).

Gulamabbas Lakha

Insights into the ʾakhlāq of Imam Ali (a.s.) from Psychology and Neuroscience

Gulamabbas Murtaza Lakha is undertaking postgraduate study approved by the British Psychological Society, focussing on mental health effects from dhikr practices and corresponding neural activity of the brain. His interests in the psychology of Islam have included research on al-Ṣaḥīfa al-Sajjādiyya at Oxford University, analysing ʾakhlāq traditions at the Islamic College in London, and lecturing for eight years on personal development from the Qurʾān, ḥadīth and Islamic history. He is an economist by profession, having been awarded the Chartered Financial Analyst designation, and manages a practice he founded twelve years ago.

AN OPEN INVITATION

PLEASE BE SEATED BY 2:00 PM

ORGANISER & SPONSOR: THE AHMED FAMILY – C/O MUHAMMADI TRUST (020 8452 1739)

Battle for Falluja is not Shias vs. Sunnis

1.CFP-The Globalization of Science in the Middle East and North Africa, 18th-20th Centuries

The Center for Religion, Ethics, and Culture and the Middle Eastern Studies Concentration at the College of the Holy Cross (http://www.holycross.edu) invite abstract submissions (300-400 words) for a conference to be held March 24-25, 2017 entitled, the Globalization of Science in the Middle East and North Africa, 18th-20th Centuries (see abstract below). Keynote speaker: Dr. Carla Nappi, the University of British Columbia.

Abstracts are due by June 15, 2016. Send abstracts to Sahar Bazzaz and Jane Murphey at globalizationofscience@gmail.com. Participants will be notified of their participation by July 1, 2016.

Conference participants will receive airfare/travel, ground transportation costs, and accommodation for the duration of the conference. In preparing their abstracts, potential participants should plan to produce a 8000-10,000 word paper for pre-circulation before the conference takes place. Participants are expected to contribute their papers to an edited volume, which will be the final outcome of the conference.

ABSTRACT:

The nineteenth and twentieth centuries mark the period in which science became globalized and institutionalized as a dominant epistemology trumping all others. The scientific study of the natural world (Botany, Taxonomy, Systematics, Geology, Comparative zoology), of human behavior and society (Psychology and Sociology), and of the past (History and Archeology) emerged and developed their own disciplinary methodologies and notions of expertise and professionalism. As a way of understanding the globalization of science in non-European contexts such as the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), scholars have turned to the field sciences such as natural history, geology, and cartographic surveying, highlighting these disciplines’ intimate connection to imperial conquest and global trade networks. Drawing on germinal works of Michel Foucault and Edward Said, some have argued that the ‘sciences’ served as a powerful tool in the hands of European conquerors.  According to this view, disciplines including mapping, statistical census gathering, natural history, archaeology, and the taxonomy of peoples, languages, and religious traditions allowed Europeans to define, categorize and order—to “know”—colonized territories and peoples and hence to dominate and rule them.

But as critics have pointed out, this perspective problematically attributes the spread of the taxonomical revolution beyond Europe to “the often violent imposition of ‘rationality’ on cultures originally endowed with ‘another reason’.” Furthermore, science as an epistemology is now firmly entrenched in and embraced by Middle Eastern societies suggesting that its advent was something more than simply imposition. In order to challenge the ‘science as imposition’ narrative and to develop a more nuanced understanding of the globalization of science in the region—its perceived promises and perils and the role of local epistemologies in the development of modern science—this panel considers the reception/assimilation/rejection/translation of scientific theories and practices by the peoples of the region through examples from a variety of scientific disciplines. While the politics of knowledge production occurred in the context of state modernization (as in Ottoman Egypt and the central lands of the Ottoman empire), on one hand, and the extension of European power into these regions, on the other, the panel considers other social, economic, and intellectual developments, which shaped (and were shaped by) this process.

This conference brings together scholars from the Middle East, Europe, the United States, and Canada, and will explore important issues related to the history of science in the MENA region during the 18^th-20^th centuries—a critical period of change and modernization when Middle Easterners were concerned about the rising power of European states and societies and the weakness of Islamic ones in relation to them. Conference participants will present papers, which consider the nature of encounters between Islamic societies and the west as the balance of power between these regions shifted in the favor of Europe, including the role of science in modernization and development in the MENA region, the relationship between modern science and religion (Islam), the effects of European imperialism on the spread of modern science in the MENA (and the Global South more generally), and the use of science and technology by MENA states and societies to combat foreign domination in the region.

Contact Email:

globalizationofscience@gmail.com

 

 

2. Workshop: “Time(s) in Comparison: Transregional Approaches to Contemporary Philosophical Thought in the Middle East and South Asia”, Berlin, 3-4 June 2016

The workshop is organized by Roman Seidel and Nils Riecken at the Berlin Graduate School for Muslim Cultures and Societies, Freie Universität Berlin / Zentrum Moderner Orient.

Information and program: www.bgsmcs.fu-berlin.de/dates/workshop_2016_times_in_comparison.html

 

3. Conference:  “Medicine, Environment and Health in the Eastern Mediterranean World, 1400-1750”, University of Cambridge, 3-4 April 2017

Taking as our focus the politically heterogeneous southern Europe and eastern Mediterranean, the Mamluk Kingdom, and the Ottoman Empire, we aim to reconstruct the healthscape of this region in the early modern period, exploring its medical unity and disunity and the human and environmental factors that played a part in it.

Deadline for abstracts: 30 June 2016. Information: http://us9.campaign-archive2.com/?u=e1ae5bef9757e58afec01a89a&id=4eba999427&e=82aeb6c61d

 

 

 

4. Submissions for Brill’s Middle East and Islamic Studies Early-Career Paper Prize 2016

The author of the winning article will receive a € 750,- cash prize and the article will be published in one of Brill’s leading journals. The Prize is open to students who are currently registered for doctoral research at a higher education institution, or have obtained their doctoral degree after 1 September 2013.

Deadline for submissions: 1 September 2016. Information: www.brill.com/paperprize

 

 

5. The international peer-reviewed open access journal Middle East – Topics and Arguments (http://meta-journal.net/) is seeking contributions for a special-themed issue on “ICONOGRAPHY”.

For more detailed information see:

http://meta-journal.net/announcement/view/14

 

 

 

6. Lapis and Gold, The Story of the Ruzbihan Qur’an

until 28 August 2016

The Chester Beatty Library, Dublin Castle, Ireland

In the late 1920s, Chester Beatty purchased a large and magnificent Qur’an. Its beautifully executed script is the work of the renowned Shiraz calligrapher Ruzbihan Muhammad al-Tab‘i al-Shirazi, although its breath-taking illumination is the work of a team of anonymous of artists. The combined quality, extent, diversity and complexity of the manuscript’s decorative programme sets it apart from almost all other 16th-century Persian Qur’ans.

In 2012, the manuscript was disbound in order to allow badly needed conservation of its 445 folios to take place. Following certain intriguing discoveries during the course of conservation, it was decided to keep the manuscript temporarily unbound to allow the Library’s curatorial and conservation staff to conduct further research on it. Through the display of more than 30 single folios and double-page openings, as well as another 20-some folios partially displayed to facilitate the discussion of pigments, the exhibition presents many of the results of that research. Three other 16th-century Qur’ans and a manual on recitation from the Library’s Islamic Collections are also included in the exhibition.

The manuscript will be rebound in its 19th-century, Ottoman binding following the close of the exhibition.

An accompanying book will be published shortly.

 

 

7. ‘Culture and Cultural Production in Iran: Past and Present’

School of Modern Languages and Institute of Iranian Studies

(17^th, 18^th and 19^th June 2016)
Convener: Saeed Talajooy <st83@st-andrews.ac.uk>

For the programme and registration, see:

http://forumfortheculturalstudiesofiran.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk/conferences/conference-programme-17th-to-19th-june-2016/

 

 

 

8. Call for Papers Deadline approaching

The “Dangerous Classes” in the Middle East and North Africa

Conference: 26 January 2017

Middle East Centre, St Antony’s College, University of Oxford

Call for Papers

The concept of the “dangerous classes” was born in mid-nineteenth century Europe and became famous after the publication in 1872 in New York of a book with the same title by the American social reformer Charles Loring Brace. The “dangerous classes,” the lumpenproletariat of Marx and Engels, described all those who had fallen out of the working classes into the lower depths of the new industrial and urban social environments, and survived there by their wits and by various amoral, disreputable or criminal strategies. They included beggars and vagrants, gypsies, pickpockets and burglars, prostitutes and courtesans, discharged soldiers, ex-prisoners, tricksters, drug-dealers; the unemployed or unemployable, indeed every type of the criminal and marginal, and were drawn from among women as well as men, and juveniles as well as adults. Such representatives of the “dangerous classes” were well-represented in literature, notably by Zola, Dickens and Victor Hugo in the nineteenth century and Brecht in the twentieth, and in popular culture of all kinds.

The “dangerous classes,” sometimes barely distinguishable from the new working class recently concentrated in the urban industrial centres, were a constant preoccupation of the emerging bourgeoisie. Fear of both permeated social policy, including among reformers, and was central to the establishment of new methods of control, policing and judicial, and even medical and psychiatric systems. Although the term fell into disuse in the twentieth century West, it is often argued that the concept remains embedded in elite discourses of connections between propertylessness, poverty, immorality, criminality and the “underclass.”

This conference takes as its central theme this notion of the “dangerous classes” and invites abstracts examining its explanatory power when applied to the Middle East and North Africa in the period from around 1800 to the present. Topics include but are not limited to: narratives of the lives of members of the “dangerous classes”; the social conditions in which they emerged; their relationship with “respectable” society and especially with the police; their political inclinations and potential; the attitudes towards them of elites; their role in shaping elite formulations of systems and institutions of discipline and control, legal/judicial, prison/asylum, medical; notions of the biological basis of criminality; their representation in literature and in popular culture. Abstracts which examine both collectivities (eg lutis or baltagiya) as well as individual strategies, and colonial/imperial as well as indigenous discourses and policies are welcome.

Abstracts of papers of no more than two hundred and fifty words are invited for consideration for inclusion in the conference.

Deadline for submission of abstracts is 30 June 2016.

Abstracts and enquiries should be addressed to Stephanie Cronin Stephanie.cronin@orinst.ox.ac.uk

 

 

 

9. The Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Pennsylvania announces the availability of a position as full-time Lecturer in Arabic Language for the academic year 2016-2017.

The appointment will be for one year with the possibility of annual renewal for up to an additional two years based on satisfactory performance and approval of the Dean.

Applicants should have native or near-native competence in modern standard Arabic, knowledge of an Arabic dialect, and an advanced degree in Arabic language pedagogy and/or another relevant subject with a primary focus on Arabic language and culture. Preference will be given to candidates who have experience in teaching Arabic language at all levels at the university or college level, in language pedagogy, and in administering the Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI). The teaching load for this position is five courses per year (3/2 or 2/3), which includes one section of the elementary-level Arabic language. Additional responsibilities include regular attendance at meetings of the Arabic language program, and working with the Director of the language program and Arabic faculty on materials development.

Candidates should apply online at http://facultysearches.provost.upenn.edu/postings/880. Submit a cover letter, CV, and statement of teaching philosophy. Also submit the names and contact information of two individuals who have agreed to provide a letter of recommendation. The University will contact the referees with instructions on how to submit their letters.

 

10. An 18th Century North African Travelling Physician’s Handbook

While cataloguing the British Library’s collection of Arabic manuscripts from West Africa (see BL blog passim) I came across a very strange item. This manuscript, Or.6557, was given to the British Museum Library (the forerunner of the British Library) by a Muhammad Shami on the 10^th of October 1903 and catalogued the following year. According to a slip of paper pasted on the blank recto of the first folio in the handwriting the donor, this work is a “book on Reml [Arabic: ʻIlm al-Raml, meaning divination by sand] and magic and some of austronomy by Saidi Saeed Abdoul Naim” with the date of composition given as 1202AH (1788 AD). The text block is loose-leaf, as is often the case in North and West Africa, and protected at either end by squares of animal hide.

– See more at: http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/asian-and-african/2016/05/an-18th-century-north-african-travelling-physicians-handbook.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+asian-and-african+%28Asia+and+Africa%29#sthash.6LzDDmrc.dpuf

 

 

 

11. The Art of the Qur’an: Treasures from the Museum of Turkish and Islamic Arts, opening October 15, 2016 at Freer|Sackler in Washington, D.C.

From October 15, 2016 until February 20, 2017, the Freer|Sackler will host the first major international loan exhibition on Qur’ans in the United States. It highlights more than fifty of the most important manuscripts from the Museum of Turkish and Islamic Arts (Türk ve Islam Eserleri Müzesi) in Istanbul, Turkey, complemented by twenty works from the Freer|Sackler collections. Representing Qur’ans from early eighth-century Damascus to late sixteenth-century Herat and Istanbul, the exhibition will trace the evolution from an orally transmitted message to a written text and its transformation into sumptuous volumes by celebrated calligraphers, illuminators, and bookbinders.

The Art of the Qur’an: Treasures from the Museum of Turkish and Islamic Arts will also consider the carefully recorded “biography” of many of the Qur’anic manuscripts. Commissioned by some of the most powerful rulers of the Islamic world, the volumes were sought out and cherished by the Ottoman ruling elite as prized possessions and were offered as gifts to public and religious institutions to express personal piety, to secure political power and prestige, and to ensure the continuity of the divine blessings (baraka) which these precious manuscripts were believed to carry.

Please see the exhibition website here, and check back for more information as it is posted.

Symposium: The Word Illuminated: Form and Function of Qur’anic Manuscripts

In conjunction with the exhibition The Art of the Qur’an: Treasures from the Museum of Turkish and Islamic Arts, the Freer|Sackler will hold an international symposium from December 1 to December 3, 2016. The focus will be on production of luxury Qur’an manuscripts in the Islamic world as well as their usage from the late seventh to the seventeenth century. Speakers will also address issues of patronage and the later lives of these remarkable works of art.

The full conference program will be posted on the Freer|Sackler website in September.

 

 

 

12. Les Arts de l’Islam en France: collections, trésors et découvertes archéologiques

6 June 2016

9:30am–6pm

Auditorium du Louvre, Paris

La présence des arts de l’Islam dans les collections publiques françaises interroge l’histoire et la nature du patrimoine national défini comme art islamique. Ce patrimoine a déjà fait l’objet de deux expositions : « Arts de l’Islam des origines à 1700 dans les collections publiques françaises » en 1971 à l’Orangerie des Tuileries, puis « L’Islam dans les collections nationales » en 1977 au Grand-Palais.

http://www.louvre.fr/les-arts-de-l-islam-en-france-collections-tresors-et-decouvertes-archeologiques

 

 

13. Columbia University – Professor / Associate Professor of Islamic History
http://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=52998
Freie Universitaet Berlin – Lecturer, Medieval Middle Eastern History (3 years)
http://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=52982

 

Understanding urban Alevism through its socio-spatial manifestations: cemevis in İzmir

Imam Ali Chair for Shi‘i Studies and Dialogue among Islamic Legal Schools — Hartford Seminary

Hartford Seminary announces an opening for a Shi‘i scholar with a distinguished record that includes an academic doctorate, religious training and lived religious commitments to occupy the newly endowed Imam Ali Chair for Shi‘i Studies.

The successful candidate will demonstrate expertise in Shi‘i Islam and its relation to other traditions of Islam and Christianity and may be grounded in one of a number of academic disciplines. The candidate must be able to teach courses at both introductory and advanced levels and have the intellectual depth required to direct Ph.D. students. The appointment begins in fall 2017.

The appointment is to the core faculty of the seminary and will be a member of the Macdonald Center for the Study of Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations. It carries the full-time teaching load of four courses per year, a student advising load expected of all faculty, and regular faculty committee and administrative responsibilities to be determined in relation to the candidate’s gifts and the seminary’s needs. Scholarly research and productivity are priorities in light of the school’s history as a place of advanced learning and publication. Hartford Seminary is a religiously diverse community and expects its faculty to appreciate and respectfully engage views and traditions that are different from one’s own.

Rank is open; Ph.D. or its equivalent is required. Review of applications will begin on 15 September 2016 and will continue until the position is filled. A complete application should be submitted electronically to Ms. Lorraine Browne at lbrowne@hartsem.edu and includes a letter of application, a current curriculum vitae, and three letters of reference submitted directly by the recommenders. For further information, please contact Dr. Scott Thumma, Chair of the Imam Ali Chair Search Committee, at sthumma@hartsem.edu.