Archive for 2016

Journal of Shi’a Islamic Studies new issue: Vol IX – Issue 1

‘Sunni-Shi’i Rapprochement:
Internal Contradictions’

Hamid Mavani

Abstract
Ecumenical initiatives to promote Sunni-Shi’i reconciliation and
mutual respect have failed to take root because they do not tackle
the incendiary issues that prompt each branch to view the other with
disdain, if not as outright apostates or unbelievers. I argue that this
will not change until the main fault lines in their worldviews, communal
self-understanding, sacred narratives, history, theology, and
philosophy are confronted head-on.

If this cannot be done, then all proclamations of Muslim unity and
brotherhood/sisterhood under one ummah will remain hollow and
lack substance, because each side’s internal discourse would remain
unchanged. Any type of mutual tolerance and coexistence prompted
by expediency and power dynamics cannot be expected to be deeprooted
and long-lasting. The United States, along with such other
local and foreign players as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Iran, Iraq, and
Syria, have instrumentalized Sunni-Shi’i sectarianism to promote
their own myopic vested interests. The result is clear for all to see:
an exponential increase in Sunni-Shi’i antagonism.

The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 33:1 (2016), 133-47

Bahraini court suspends Al-Wefaq opposition group

See also BBC: Bahrain suspends main Shia opposition group

ADHRB Weekly: Bahrain Arrests Rights Defender Nabeel Rajab, NGOs demand immediate release

1. Lecturer in Islam in South East Asia

The School of Divinity, History and Philosophy at the University of Aberdeen seeks to make an appointment of a Lecturer in the field of Islam in South East Asia with a provisional start date of January 2017.

Applicants should have a proven research record in the relevant field and experience of teaching in higher education. This position will involve a commitment to undergraduate teaching, postgraduate supervision and research and will carry particular duties in the delivery of teaching and in the supervision of doctoral work.

The School offers a wide range of undergraduate courses leading to an MA (without honours) after three years or, more usually, a single or joint honours MA after four years. The School houses the largest body of postgraduate students within the University

The successful candidate will teach in the Religious Studies undergraduate programme, introduce and lead exciting and challenging courses in Islamic Studies at undergraduate and masters level, and provide postgraduate supervision within the field of their expertise.

College of Arts and Social Sciences

Divinity, History & Philosophy

Staff Category: Teaching

Position Type: Full Time

Closing Date: 04/07/2016

Ref No: DHP049A

For more details please visit:

https://www.abdnjobs.co.uk/vacancy/lecturer-in-islam-in-south-east-asia-267144.html

 

 

2. I.B.Tauris is currently inviting new proposals for the Islamic South Asia series.

http://www.ibtauris.com/islamic-south-asia

This series aims to:

• Explore and reconsider the role of Islam in South Asia, both historically and in a contemporary context
• Address current issues in response to modern contexts
• Encourage a forward-thinking and multi-disciplinary approach to South Asian and Islamic Studies

You can find full details on the series webpage: http://www.ibtauris.com/islamic-south-asia

 Series Editor:

Professor Ruby Lal (Emory University)

 Advisory Board:

Iftikhar Dadi (Cornell University)

Stephen F. Dale (Ohio State University)

Michael Fisher (Oberlin College)

Ebba Koch (University of Vienna)

David Lewis (London School of Economics)

Francis Robinson (Royal Holloway, University of London)

Willem van Schendel (University of Amsterdam)

Nira Wickramasinghe (Leiden University)

If you would like to submit a proposal or have any questions, please contact the Commissioning Editor at I.B.Tauris, Sophie Rudland, srudland@ibtauris.com

 

 

 

3. Le Département d’études persanes de l’Université de Strasbourg recrute un ATER pour l’année universitaire 2016-2017 pour un service de 192 H / TD, réparties sur deux semestres et constituées de cours et de travaux dirigés en études persanes pour les niveaux suivants :

DU (initiation au persan), Licence (linguistique et histoire de la littérature) et éventuellement Master (analyse littéraire et traductologie).

L’ATER recruté devra donc être capable d’assurer des cours de langue à tous les niveaux, de traduction (thème-version littéraire) et histoire de la littérature. Par conséquent, une solide maîtrise des deux langues (persane et française) est exigée.

Pour toute information complémentaire, veuillez consulter la page « Attachés temporaires d’enseignement et de recherche (ATER) » sur le site Web de l’Université de Strasbourg à cette adresse :
http://www.unistra.fr/index.php?id=19432
Ainsi que ces adresses concernant les postes publiés dans GALAXIE :

https://www.galaxie.enseignementsup-recherche.gouv.fr/ensup/ATERListesOffresPubliees/ATEROffres_publiees_TriParSection.html

https://www.galaxie.enseignementsup-recherche.gouv.fr/ensup/ATERListesOffresPubliees/0673021V/FOPC_17745.pdf

—

 

 

4. Beauty and Identity: Islamic Art from the Los Angeles County Museum of Artby Linda Komaroff, with contributions by John Hirx and Anke Scharrahs, and Sandra Williams, Manal Alghannam, and Keelan Overton (New Haven: Yale University Press and Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2016). This illustrated volume features 150 works from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s rich holdings of Islamic art, including numerous unpublished artworks from the collection such as a fifteenth-century ceiling panel from Spain and especially an eighteenth-century reception room from Damascus. Full-color plate images are accompanied by descriptions in both English and Arabic, organized chronologically and thematically.

See http://yalebooks.com/book/9781943042036/beauty-and-identity

 

 

5. Conference: “The Dynamics of Change in the Pakistan-Afghanistan Region: Politics on Borderland”, University of Peshawar, Pakistan, 29-31 August 2016

This Fifth Bara Gali Conference invites papers that take up the common theme of “politics on border” along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border in different ways. The conference aims to make a series of interdisciplinary forays in making the Pakistan-Afghanistan border more understandable.

Deadline for abstracts: 20 June 2016. Information: https://networks.h-net.org/node/73374/announcements/128159/cfp-extended-fifth-bara-gali-conference-dynamics-change-pakistan
 

6. International Conference: “Regime Transformation and the Recomposition of Elites in the Arab World after 2010-2011: A Comparative Approach“, Tunis, 20-22 October 2016

The conference is jointly organized by the Institut de recherche sur le Maghreb contemporain (IRMC) and the Konrad‐Adenauer‐Stiftung (KAS). Working languages are French and English.

Deadline for proposals: 16 July 2016. Information: http://irmcmaghreb.org/images/pdf/call.pdf
 

 

7. Conference: “Global Muslim Encounters: Homogenisation and Diversity across Time and Space”, University of Cambridge, 9 – 10 December 2016

The interdisciplinary conference aims to investigate Muslim interactions and encounters in various spatial and temporal settings since ca. 1250. Historians, art historians, anthropologists, political scientists, and scholars of comparative literature and Islamic studies who work on Islamic communities all across the globe are invited.

Abstracts are due on 15 July 2016. Information: http://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/events/26819
 

 

8. Conference of ACLA: “Sacred Troubling Topics in the Tanakh, New Testament, and Qur’an”, Utrecht, Netherlands, 6-9 July 2017

Suggested troubling topics include racism, domestic violence, purity/impurity, polemics, figural readings, suicide, sexuality, unbeliever, LGBTQ, misogyny, trickster, humor, fallible prophet, good vs./and evil, self-denial, spying, deception.

Submission of proposals: 1-23 September 2016. Information: https://networks.h-net.org/node/73374/announcements/128349/sacred-troubling-topics-tanakh-new-testament-and-quran-acla
 

 

9. Lecturer in Islamic Studies, University of Birmingham

Applications are welcome from scholars in Qur’an (including study of hadith or the history of tafsir), in classical Arabic texts, in Islamic law and jurisprudence.

Deadline for application: 29 June 2016.  Information: http://tinyurl.com/gm4hgm2
 

 

10. Summer School: “Reading and Analyzing Ottoman Administrative Sources”, Amman, 31 August – 2 September 2016

During the program we will introduce young researchers (mostly MA and Ph.D. candidates, but post-docs may also apply) to reading and analyzing the various manuscript sources which have been issued by Ottoman administrative institutions at both provincial and imperial levels.

Deadline: 15 June 2016. Information: www.orient-institut.org/fileadmin/user_upload/Summer_school_Amman_CfA_English.pdf

 

11. Articles for “The Journal of Contemporary European Antisemitism”

This journal is the first of its kind and will cover all forms of anti-Semitism found in today’s Europe. We invite scholars from all relevant disciplines across the social sciences and humanities to send us their original research articles.

Deadline for submissions: 1 August 2016. Information: www.academicstudiespress.com/journals/jcea/

 

 

12. I invite you to visit Abadan:Retold (www.abadan.wiki): an innovative online
platform for documenting the social history of Abadan, Iran.

We have just launched in beta version with interesting new articles and essays
by Willem Floor, Paul Schroeder, Mattin Biglari and yours truly. Over the
coming weeks, more texts will be added by Shireen Walton, Khodadad Rezakhani,
Touraj Atabaki, Kaveh Ehsani, Pamela Karimi and many more.

In the second phase, the website will contain an interactive map, connected to
an Abadan-wikipedia, oral history podcasts, photo galleries as well as other
features.

Please spread among your friends and in your networks – and let us know of
possible writers, academic and non-academic, for the platform.

Many thanks for your support.

Best regards,
Rasmus Christian Elling
Associate Professor
University of Copenhagen
Denmark

 

 

13. Position: Post-Doctoral Research Assistant

Institution: Department of  Arabic and Islamic Studies at the Georg-August-University  of Göttingen

Hours: Fulltime (regular weekly working time of 39,8 h per week)

Salary: According to TV-L 13

Start:  01.09.2016

 __________________________________________________________________

Professor Irene Schneider, Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies of the Georg-August University of Göttingen, invites applications for a two-year

Post-Doctoral Research Assistant position

(Payment is based on the German salary scheme TV-L 13., with regular weekly working time of 39,8 h per week)

The successful candidate, beside some teaching, shall especially help building up and work in the project Understanding Shari’a: Past Perfect. Present Imperfect“ (USPPIP) which is a two-year project financed by Humanities European Research Area (HERA) (www.heranet.info), integrated in the HERA-Program: Uses of the Past. It is a joint project involving four European universities: University of Exeter (U.K.),University of Leiden (Netherlands), University of Bergen (Norway) and University of Göttingen (Germany). He/she shall investigate how concepts of the past affect the ongoing legal discourse and practice in Muslim societies today. Each of the four universities has its own focus: violence (Exeter), custom and practice (Leiden), role of the state (Bergen) and gender (Göttingen). Close collaboration with the project researchers in the other universities is a prerequisite.

The candidate is required to hold an excellent Ph.D. in Islamic Studies with a special focus on Islamic law and have profound knowledge in the area of gender studies. Other qualifications comprise high proficiency in Arabic, and if possible, good reading ability in another Islamic language as well as experience in publication procedures and teaching.

The position offers post-doctoral students the possibility of further qualification by habilitation. There is the option of job-sharing.

The University of Göttingen is committed to increase the number of individuals with disabilities in its workforce and therefore encourages applications from thus qualified individuals.

Furthermore the University of Göttingen seeks to increase the number of women in those areas where they are underrepresented and therefore explicitly encourages women to apply.

As the university regards itself as a family-friendly institution and supports the compatibility of science/ profession and family.

Please send your  applications including the usual documents  to Prof. Dr. Irene Schneider,  Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Seminar für Arabistik/Islamwissenschaft, Heinrich-Düker-Weg 14, 37073 Göttingen;  E-Mail: sekretariat.schneider@phil.uni-goettingen.de before June 30, 2016.

For information please contact Prof. Dr. Irene Schneider, E-mail: ischnei@uni-goettingen.de

Bahrain king ‘bans mixing religion and politics’

We Condemn the Killings in Orlando

See also statement from Imam al-Khoei Foundation (New York).
Emails received also from al-Baqee Organisation (Chicago) and Islamic Educational Center of Orange County (California)

UN: Return Saudi-led Coalition to ‘List of Shame’

Iremam – Journées d’étude IREMAM/WAFAW/LABEXMED