“Theologies of Divine Speech and the Human Exigencies of Law: A Conundrum for Classical and Contemporary Islamic Legal Hermeneutics.” In Dynamics of Tradition: Islamic Theology and Law in Relation, ed. Idris Nassery and Muna Tatari, 35–61. Studies in Islamic Law and Society, ed. A. Kevin Reinhart and Nadjma Yassari, no. 57. Leiden: Brill, 2026.
The Al-Mahdi Institute’s 2024 annual summer workshop on Islamic law was a spectacular demonstration of scholarship on classical and current Shi`i legal theory, focused on highly technical questions of language and meaning. My contribution was:
“Clarity, Ambiguity, and Interpretive Flexibility in Islamic Legal Theory from al-Shāfiʿī to Hassan Hanafi.” The 12th Annual AMI Contemporary Fiqhī Issues Workshop “Language and Meaning in Islamic Legal Theory,” Al-Mahdi Institute, Birmingham, UK, July 4, 2024.
The papers will be published by the Al-Mahdi Institute Press in 2025, in a volume edited by myself and Professor Mohsen Kadivar.
It was good to be back at the first British Association for Islamic Studies conference to be held in person since 2019. My paper this year was:
“Anthropological Reorientations in Qur’anic Hermeneutics: History, Structuralism, Ideology, Phenomenology, and Postmodernism between Europe and Indonesia.” British Association for Islamic Studies, University of Edinburgh, June 6, 2022.
Islamic Legal Theory: A Critical Introduction Based on al-Juwayni’s Waraqat fi usul al‑fiqh. Indianapolis: Hackett, 2022.
This book is a revised and slightly expanded version of my Critical Introduction to Islamic Legal Theory, which was published online in 2017. Many thanks to Rick Todhunter at Hackett for suggesting that it be published as an affordable paperback for classroom use. It is available on Hackett’s web site as an ebook ($15.50), a paperback ($18), and in a library-style cloth binding (not sewn, $58). Instructors may order examination copies for a nominal charge of $3.
But the book isn’t just for students. Along with a critical edition and English translation of al-Juwayni’s widely used Kitab al-Waraqat fi usul al-fiqh, it offers a novel commentary that highlights the significance of classical debates for contemporary concerns in a way that I hope will prove illuminating for specialists.
Many thanks to Muna Tatari and Idris Nassery for their warm hospitality and engagement during their conference on “Dynamics of Tradition: Islamic Theology and Law in Relation” at the University of Paderborn, September 17-19, 2021. I presented the following paper:
“Theologies of Divine Speech and the Human Exigencies of Law: A Conundrum for Classical and Contemporary Islamic Legal Hermeneutics.” Dynamics of Tradition: Islamic Theology and Law in Relation, Institute for Islamic Theology, University of Paderborn, Germany, September 19, 2021.
