The Maliki madhhab (school, plural madhahib) is one of the four main extant schools of Sunni Islamic law. Historically, the Maliki school exercised near-hegemony in both legal thought and practice over wide swaths of northwest…
Why do two people read the same text and arrive at different conclusions? What does it mean to follow scripture? What roles and limitations do scholars face when interpreting a text? What happens when scholarly…
M.A. Muqtedar Khan. Islam and Good Governance: A Political Philosophy of Ihsan. (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019).pp.279. $29.99 paperback. DOI : 10.1057/978-1-137-54832-0 The outbreak of the Arab Spring clearly demonstrated a need to reformulate…
In January 2018, I sat down for an interview with Mahmoud Dicko, president of the High Islamic Council of Mali (HCIM). As I asked Dicko what I thought were relatively innocuous questions about his positions…
In the contemporary understanding, the word madrasa connotes various meanings and interpretations. For Muslims, however, this word has its historical significance as an institution for learning; in the modern world, it was set up as…
The modern use of the term Salafism is ambiguous and confusing. This ambiguity becomes apparent when many Salafis themselves are not entirely clear about what Salafism entails, assuming that it is simply to follow the…
In early December 2017, the British Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson gave a speech to the Foreign Commonwealth Office on the U.K’s counter-terrorism efforts entitled ‘How global Britain is helping to win the struggle against Islamist…
The creation and strategic utilization, and selective sectarianization of sacred history is a key component of contemporary conflicts between competing social movements and armed groups around the world. This article will highlight the deployment of…
Animosity between Sunnis and Shi‘a is sometimes perceived as dating back centuries in such a way that both branches of Islam are almost destined to be at loggerheads with one another. Although it would be…