BRAIS 2021 Online Series

BRAIS was forced to cancel its 2020 Annual Conference, scheduled to take place at the Aga Khan University's Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations.

With an in-person conference not possible in 2021, BRAIS has decided to deliver a free online series of panels drawn exclusively from the cancelled 2020 programme. The panels will be delivered online via Zoom between March and July 2021 and the series is free and open to all.

For further information and to register for free, visit the BRAIS website: www.brais.ac.uk/conferences/brais-2021

Provisional Programme (subject to change)

Teaching and Learning Islam: Case Studies from Denmark, Sweden and Germany

Friday 19 March, 2pm GMT

Maria Lindebæk Lyngsøe (University of Copenhagen) Managing Tradition: Danish Muslim Women’s Islamic Education

Maximilian Lasa (University of Copenhagen) Expanding Horizons of Higher Islamic Education

Simon Stjernholm (University of Copenhagen) Brief Reminders: Muslim Preachers, Mediation, and Time

Kasper Ly Netterstrøm (University of Copenhagen) Muslim Representation and Lobbying within EU Institutions

Sufism: Diachronic Studies

Tuesday 30 March at, 2pm BST

John Zaleski (New York University Abu Dhabi) “The Inheritance of Hunger”: The Making of an Ascetic Ideal in Early ‘Abbasid Baghdad

Gavin Picken (Hamad Bin Khalifa University) “Observing” Spiritual Purification:  Disciplining the Soul in al-Muḥāsibī’s Kitāb al-Riʿāya li Ḥuqūq Allāh

Naoki Yamamoto (Ibn Haldun University) Liu Zhi’s Five Phases of the Moon: Sayr wa Suluk literature in Chinese Islam

Modern Islamic Movements

Monday 3 May, 2pm BST

Dietrich Reetz (BGSMCS, Free University of Berlin) Amir or Shura: How to lead a global missionary movement of Islam like the Tablighi Jama’at

Sara Tonsy (CHERPA, Institut d’Etudes Politique-Aix) An Alternative Political Economy in Egypt: the case of the Muslim Brotherhood

Fabian Spengler (Tel Aviv University) The Limited Appeal of Salafiyya and Wasatiyya for Muslims in Europe

Islam and Society in Europe

Tuesday 18 May at 12pm BST

Fouzia Azzouz (University of Bristol) British Muslim marriage and divorce practices: Avenues for regulation

Fatou Sambe (Cardiff University) Muslim Convert Families and the Experiences of Convert Children

Laiqah Osman (Cardiff University) Muslim Women in Britain and the Authority of Online Islamic Content

Tatia Tavkhelidze (European University Viadrina) Boundaries between the living concept of Islamophobia and the term 'being Islamophobic'

Criticality in Islamic Scholarship

Thursday 20 May, 10:30am BST

I-Wen Su (National Chengchi University) ʿAlī b. al-Madīnī: a Critical Review and Reconstruction of His Biography

Mostafa Movahedifar (University of Birmingham) The position of content criticism within early Shīʿī hadith scholarship: the case study of the legal punishment of committing zinā with a female slave of one’s wife

Essam Ayyad (Qatar University) Medieval Muslim Katātīb between Independent Thinking and Learning by Rote  

Colonialism and the Empire of Law

Friday 21 May, 2pm BST

Rozaliya Garipova (Nazarbayev University) Colonial Rule and the Legality of Marriage in the Russian Empire

Sohaira Siddiqui (Georgetown University) A Subtle Imbibe: Islamic law in 19th Century Colonial Courts in India

Alexandre Caeiro (Hamad Bin Khalifa University) Justice before Oil: Pearl Trade, Diving Courts, and the British Legal Order in the Arabian Peninsula (1860s-1950s)

Family, Sexuality and Gender in Islamic Law

Friday 28 May, 2pm BST

Hakime Reyyan Yasar (Mardin Artuklu University) From Fatwa Books to Codification: The Maintenance Code (Nafaka Kanunu) in Ottoman Family Law

Muhammad Faisal Khalil (University of Oxford) The Family as the Ordinary within Islam

Muhammad Zubair (Lahore University of Management Sciences) Regulation of Sex under Islamic Legal System: Application of Islamic Criminal (Hudood) Laws in Pakistan (1980-2018)

Emad Mohamed (RGCL/University of Wolverhampton) Gender Differences in Fatwa

Studies in Applied Islamic Law

Thursday 10 June, 4pm BST 

Sumayyah Bostan (University of California, Berkeley) Abu Hanifa’s opinion on reciting the Qur’an in Persian in the prayer as it appears in the post-classical commentary tradition

John Burden (University of Chicago) The Logic of Iftāʾ: Ibn Marzūq’s Fatwā on European Paper

Rami Koujah (Princeton University) How to Get Away with Murder: Homicide and Culpability in Islamic Law

The Māturīdī Theological Tradition

Wednesday 23 June, 3:00pm BST

Safaruk Chowdhury (Whitethread Institute) A Very Heated Affair: Abū Manṣūr al-Māturīdī’s Justification for Hell’s Unending Chastisement

Kayhan Ali Özaykal (İstanbul Üniversitesi) Al-Maturidi on al-'Aql in Metaphysics and Ethics

Ramon Harvey (Ebrahim College) The Case of the Missing Disciple: Abū al-Ḥasan al-Rustughfanī (d. ca. 345/956) and the Reception of the Theology of Abū Manṣūr al-Māturīdī (d. 333/944) before Māturīdism

Kamaluddin Ahmed (University of Oxford) The Kitāb talkhīṣ al-adilla li-qawāʿid al-tawḥīd of al-Ṣaffār al-Bukhārī (d. 534/1139): Crafting a Historical Genealogy of the Māturīdī School of kalām

Najah Nadi (Cambridge Muslim College) Īmān as taṣdīq in the Works of Saʿd al-Dīn al-Taftāzānī (d. 792/1390)

Muslim Identity in Secular Spaces

Thursday 24 June, 11am BST

Ibtihal Ramadan (The University of Edinburgh) Muslim Academics Defining their Professional Identity: Faith, Challenges, and Career Success

Hanan Fara (University of Birmingham) Cultural Capital, Habitus and Social Capital impact on Muslim Students’ University Experiences?

Durali Karacan (Brunel University London) An Exploration of the Challenges of Bearded Muslim Men in the UK in the Age of Islamophobia

Haroon Sidat (Cardiff University) The ‘Ulamā are Backwards: Looking at the Past to Navigate the Present

Islamic Legal Theory

Thursday 8 July, 2pm BST

Merve Özaykal (İstanbul University) The Criticism by al-Jassās of his Predecessors on Abrogation

Josef Linnhoff (University of Edinburgh) A modern-day Ẓāhirī: The Legal Thought of Muhammad Asad (d. 1992)

Emine Bal (Queen Mary University) Modern adaptations of al-Shāṭibī’s Maqāṣid theory

Tafsīr and Qur’anic Hermeneutics

Monday 5 July 2021, 9am BST

Ali Aghaei (Berlin-Brandenburg Academy) and Michael Marx (Berlin-Brandenburg Academy) Explicit vs Implicit Variant Readings of the Quranic Text in early Quranic exegesis: The Case of Tafsīr of Muqātil ibn Sulaymān (d. 767)

Martin Whittingham (CMCS, Oxford) Early Qur'anic Exegesis on Positive Verses about the Previous Scriptures

Tarek Makhlouf (The University of Melbourne) Between Muʿtazilī Heritage and Ẓāhirī Imperative: Abū Ḥayyān al-ʾAndalusī’s (d. 745/1344) Philological Practice

Mahmoud Afifi (Lancaster University) Bint al-Shāṭīʾ: A Tradition-Based Feminist Voice for Women’s Emancipation

What does it take to be a citizen? Islam, belonging and the politics of ‘culture’ in anxious times (round table discussion)

Date and Time TBC

Khadijah Elshayyal (University of Edinburgh) ‘From conditionality of engagement to conditionality of citizenship – Muslims in a brave new Britain’

Daan Beekers (University of Edinburgh) Culturalisation of citizenship in the Netherlands: sexual diversity, belonging and moral citizenship

Idil Akinci (University of Edinburgh) Culture in the ‘Politics of Identity’: Conceptions of national identity and citizenship among second generation non-Gulf Arab migrants in Dubai

Yahya Barry (University of Edinburgh) Negotiation and reconfigurations of citizenship: a case study of second generation and convert Muslims in Sweden and Denmark

Alexis Blouët (University of Edinburgh) “Is laicity a French legal tradition? The polemic around the right of Muslim mothers accompanying school trips to wear hijab.”

Studies in Medieval and Modern Shiʿism

Date and Time TBC

Shayesteh Ghofrani (Institute of Ismaili Studies) Understanding Wilāya in Formative period of Shiʿism

Samer El-Karanshawy (University of Exeter) The Memory of Husayn: the Drama of “History” and Ritual

Yousif Al-Hilli (University of Birmingham) The Forgotten Uprising: The 1991 Intifadha and The Political Role of Shia Clerics in Iraq

Sufis, Salafis, Islamists and Copts: Inter- and Intra-faith Polemics after the Arab Spring

Date and Time TBC

Ermin Sinanovic (Shenandoah University) Political Theology of Obedience and Competitive Authoritarianism in the Middle East

Rahma Bavelaar (University of Amsterdam) Mobilising Gendered Salafi Activism in Egypt in the Shadow of the Arab Spring

Usaama al-Azami (University of Oxford) Responding to Despotism in Modern Islam: The Contrasting Political Philosophies of Yūsuf al-Qaraḍāwī and ʿAbdullāh b. Bayyah

Besnik Sinani (Freie Universität Berlin) The Responses of Saudi Sufi Scholars to the Arab Spring: An Investigation of Religious Conceptions, Positionality, and Histories that Inform Scholarly Political Choices