Categories : Field-specific (academic)

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Call for Papers

The Carleton Centre for the Study of Islam is pleased to announce that an international Ismaili Studies Conference will take place on March 9 and 10, 2017 at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. It will build on the remarkable success of the Ismaili Studies Conference: State of the Field held at the University of Chicago in 2014. These multidisciplinary gatherings are a progressive endeavour to provide opportunities for the presentation of research as well as for academic discussion and debate on the scholarly endeavour termed broadly as Ismaili Studies. They provide a pluralist locus for scholarship on the various entities and communities that are related to, have emerged from or are associated in other ways with Ismaili expressions of Islam in the past and the present. The conference also addresses these communities’ relations within the wider Shia, Muslim and other societies. Also of interest are the engagements across religious boundaries and the articulations of thought and faith in between dominantly defined religious and cultural domains. This multidisciplinary intellectual space includes but is not limited to the critical analysis of the histories, migrations, and institutions as well as of social, economic, political and cultural expressions. It is also inclusive of all geographical regions. Such an approach provides for a robust and integral understanding of a broadly situated Ismaili Studies.

Proposals for papers and panels are invited in the following areas,
but are not limited to:
 Art and architecture  Education  History  Institutional development  Inter-faith/inter-cultural relations  Khoja Studies  Literature  Media and communication  Migration, diaspora, transnationalism  Music  Philosophy and theology  Politics  Policy  Religious practice  Socio-economic development  Values and doctrines

Abstracts should be sent by July 8, 2016
to: Professor Karim H. Karim – karim_karim@carleton.ca
Director, Carleton Centre for the Study of Islam

Shia Muslim Studies – Centre for Islamic Shia Studies CISS

The 3rd issue of the Shi’a Studies Journal is available at:
http://shiastudies.org/docs/pdfs/shia-studies-e-journal-issue-3–27-june-2016.pdf?Status=Master&sfvrsn=2

CISS look forward to all feedback as we endeavor to make future editions enriched with thought provoking articles written by our future academic researchers. Graduate students, researchers and academics are invited to submit essays, book reviews and articles on Shi‘a Studies.

Arabia Saudí ante sus desafíos

Spanish-language VANGUARDIA Dossier on Saudi Arabia (No. 61, July-September 2016).

Contributors: Paul Aarts, W. Lippman, Andrew Hammond, David Commins, Toby Matthiesen, Mansoor Moaddel, Madawi Al-Rasheed, Jean-Francois Seznec, Caroline Montagu, Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, Rodger Shanahan, Kenneth Weisbrode, and Rami Khoury.

http://www.lavanguardia.com/vanguardia-dossier/20160615/402521191134/vanguardia-dossier-arabia-saudi-desafios.html

Deconstructing Minorities/Majorities in Parliamentary Gulf States (Kuwait and Bahrain)

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

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

Iremam – Journées d’étude IREMAM/WAFAW/LABEXMED

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.