Call for Papers
Conference “Early Islamic Jurisprudence and the Question of Origin”
The Center for Islamic Theology at the University of Münster, in cooperation with the Institute for Studies and Research Namāʾ, invites scholars to actively participate in the conference “Early Islamic jurisprudence and the question of its origin”. This conference will take place on 15. December 2023 via Zoom.
Interested researchers have the opportunity to organize their participation with a 20-minute presentation and subsequent discussion.
If you have any questions or would like more information, you can contact the conference coordinator, Dr. Abderrahmane Zaatri, at the following email address: abderrahmane.zaatri@uni-muenster.de
More details:
1. Background and description of the topic
How did early Islamic jurisprudence develop? Under what circumstances did it arise? How did the early legal scholars gain their academic reputation and social influence? Can we assert that political powers influenced their perspectives and works? This conference aims to give researchers the opportunity to analyze the development of Islamic jurisprudence and the way in which legal scholars performed in early Islamic society.
Such issues are a real challenge for studies of early Islamic jurisprudence due to the limited sources. Fortunately, today we have adequate texts that can help us to analyze the development of jurisprudence and to understand the factors that influenced it.
By tracing power dynamics, a significant number of researchers analyze the history of Islamic jurisprudence. Postcolonial studies have advanced this view, particularly by incorporating Michel Foucault’s approaches to the study of Islam. While there are aspects to this approach that can be considered useful, numerous shortcomings can be identified, including the neglect of personal motives of historical actors and the limited viewing of events from their own perspective. Recent investigations into the sociology of Islam seek to give renewed credence to the interpretive sociology by Max Weber. Due to the small number of studies conducted within this methodological selection, there is great interest in further developing this type of research and using the methods of interpretive sociology in researching the historical development of Islam and its institutions. This is seen as a key objective of this conference, which also includes exploring early Islam and testing its techniques.
2. Languages of the conference
The working languages of the conference are Arabic and English.
3. Submission of abstracts
Abstracts must not exceed 500 words and must be submitted by 25. September 2023, to the following email address:
Islamwissenschaften@uni-muenster.de or: info@namaeacademy.com
4. Publication:
The articles of the conference will be published after the conference.
5. Important dates:
- Deadline for submission of abstracts: 25. September 2023
- Notification of accepted abstracts: 30. September 2023
- Submission deadline for complete research papers: 1. December 2023
- Start of the conference: 15. December 2023