This project provides a unique perspective on Iranian women’s religious authority and their attempts to reform women’s legal status. It challenges assumptions rooted in secular-liberal feminism that has historically assumed an intrinsic discord between women’s agency and religion. This study focuses on the prominent Iranian women’s coalition, Zanan, and its use of faith–based activism to advance women’s rights within Shiʿi Iran, through individual empowerment and institutional reform. My research utilizes a combination of detailed case studies, ethnographic research methods, and textual analysis to shed light on debates on indigenous reformation within the Islamic tradition and the nature of female religious authority in this context. This research unravels the complexities Iranian women encounter in challenging deeply ingrained cultural and religious beliefs. Important questions driving this project are: What are the basic premises of the Islamic constructions of gender and justice? What are the possibilities and limits of achieving gender justice within a Shiʿi Islamic framework? Is the conventional discourse of Islamic law receptive to influence from bottom-up faith-based activism? The project unpacks these questions and takes an insider look into the practices adopted by Zanan, and its critical engagement with faith-based activism to advance gender egalitarianism through women's hermeneutics. By using Zanan’s activism as a lens through which to view women’s legal status, I argue that Muslim women’s access to and use of religious resources has reinforced their position in gender negotiations. The central aim of the project is to examine the extent to which women’s contribution to production of religious knowledge and their involvement in faith-based activism transforms patriarchal interpretations of Islamic scriptures and institutions. Drawing on case study and ethnographic research methods, this study argues that female religious activists not only struggle against patriarchy and conventional frameworks, but also cultivate a distinctively women's hermeneutics that simultaneously challenges Western liberalism and religious orthodoxy. Through the use of interdisciplinary research methods, drawing on works in religious studies, women’s studies, and sociology, this study approaches women’s faith-based activism textually and contextually, as well as in actual practice.

This paper investigates the socio-religious contestations around gender rights in Egypt through the case study of Abdallah Rushdy, a celebrity Muslim preacher and social media influencer. Rushdy, who is traditionally trained at al-Azhar but appeals to a young audience by dressing casually and showing off his gym workouts, performs what I call a toxic masculinization of religious discourse. When asked for his scholarly opinion on an issue, Rushdy chooses the one position, out of many acceptable positions in the Islamic tradition, which reflects his patriarchal view of the relationship between heterosexual men and other genders. I analyze Rushdy’s posts, his audience’s responses and the emerging online subculture surrounding belief, mental health, and gender in contemporary Egypt. Rushdy uses his charisma, religious authority as an alum of al-Azhar, and what some might see as a desirable lifestyle with brand-name apparel and a bodybuilding regimen, to gain, sustain and provide content that engages with, entertains and responds to concerns of a large following. He is adept at using imagery to capture the social media user’s attention, including the use of videos of varying lengths (two to fifteen minutes) and satirical memes poking fun at the ideas of his intellectual opponents. Each of these platforms offers spaces for negotiations, debates and general exchanges between Rushdy and his followers. For this paper, I systematically read and analyzed hundreds of posts made by Rushdy on Facebook from 2020 to 2023, particularly those about gender. Specifically, I analyze his stance on the issue of marital rape, which was brought into the public conversation in April 2021 with the release of the Egyptian drama series Newton’s Cradle. His is an example of a hybrid religious preacher endowed with legitimacy through traditional religious education while sporting the influence and lifestyle of a social media personality with a large online following. This is a case study in the changes to religious authority and religious discourse on gender in the age of social media and memes.

This lecture deals with legal opinions (fatwās) for Muslims living in Israel as a minority under non-Muslim rule. A well-developed legal doctrine known as fiqh al-aqalliyyāt al-muslima (jurisprudence concerning Muslim minorities) applies to Muslim minorities living in the West. The innovators of fiqh al-aqalliyyāt, Yūsuf al-Qaraḍāwī and Ṭaha Jābir al-ʿAlwānī, did not issue legal opinions for the Muslim minority living in Israel, which, because of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, is classified as The Abode of War (dār al-ḥarb). In this lecture, I examine developments in Islamic jurisprudence for the Muslim minority living in Israel, with a focus on the legal opinions of Sheikh Rāʾid Badīr, the senior religious authority of the southern branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel and the pioneer in issuing fatwās for the Muslim minority in Israel.

In recent years, particularly in the aftermath of the Arab Spring, neo-traditionalism has emerged as a significant force in contemporary Islamic discourse. Within Western academic literature, neo-traditionalism is often characterized as a trend within Islamic Sunnism that emphasizes the importance of adhering to one of the four schools of Islamic Law, along with one of the traditional schools of theology, namely Ash’arism or Maturidism. Additionally, neo-traditionalism places high value on Sufism and underscores the significance of the unbroken sanad (chain of transmission) for acquiring authentic Islamic knowledge. In the discourse of neo-traditionalists, this appreciation of Sufism is accompanied by a critical stance towards modernity and the Islamic trends that have emerged in the modern period. Abdullah Bin Bayyah has frequently been cited as one of the foremost proponents of contemporary neo-traditionalism. Within Western academia, his religious and political discourse has been characterized in two distinct ways: firstly, as a reiteration of classical Islamic theology of obedience (Wala Qusay); and secondly, as a modernist discourse in line with that of Rashid Rida, albeit adorned with traditional elements to convey an aura of authenticity (David Warren). In my presentation, I aim to assess the ongoing academic discourse surrounding Bin Bayyah by examining his ideas in relation to each of these identified features of neo-traditionalism. To achieve this, I will juxtapose Bin Bayyah's discourse with that of another significant contemporary Islamic figure, Yūsuf al-Qaraḍāwī (d.2022). My contention is that after thorough analysis, it becomes apparent that Bin Bayyah’s legal methodology aligns closely with the contemporary centrist (waṣaṭī) reformist approach, predominantly championed by al-Qaraḍāwī and other like-minded revivalists. The disparities between al-Qaraḍāwī and Bin Bayyah in their legal approaches are more a matter of degree than essence. Both scholars engage in selective and creative ijtihāḍ, although Bin Bayyah generally exhibits more reluctance to explicitly override the established legal rulings of the madhhabs in favor of such creative interpretations. While both scholars strategically utilize the aura of tradition to legitimize their reformist discourse, Bin Bayyah’s narrative places heavier normative emphasis on the legal tradition of the madhhabs. Therefore, rather than representing a mere reiteration of traditional religious discourse or modernism cloaked in tradition, Bin Bayyah's discourse should be understood as an integral part of the centrist (waṣaṭī) approach that has been developed by revivalists and Islamic scholars since the 1970s.

The paper studies Muslim Modernizing discourses that emerged in colonial times in the 19th century and their approach towards the monumental traditional tafsīr works. Tentatively defined, the Modernist Islamic Reform (MIR) as “an effort, driven largely by the desire for ‘progress’ (a loaded concept), to reconcile Islam with modernity through re-interpretation while trying to remain authentic.” The paper seeks to demonstrate that the departure from the tafsīr tradition by the MIR had clearer political aims. For instance, al-Baydāwī’s tafsir was “the crowning achievement” of the tafsīr tradition (Walid Saleh). It is the very nature of Bayḍāwī’s tafsir, its interdisciplinary approach, and the imposing apparatus of commentaries and super-commentaries that it came to embody the tradition, that the MIR could not afford to work with. The exegetes within the MIR, therefore, saw it as necessary to marginalize it, if not deconstruct it. Abū al-Kalām Āzād (d. 1958) the upholder of the ‘unity of religions’ thesis in Indian politics assails the tafsīr of Bayḍāwī and its commentaries as the lowest levels the discipline of tafsīr ever reached in history. Āzād’s work had a disappointing reception in South Asia, and was poorly rated by early reviews of its English translation (Rudi Paret 1969). But a response from within the vicinity came from Mawdūdī (d. 1979) who mostly relied on the grammatical parsing of Bayḍāwī for his Urdu translation. The Later Mawdūdī (post 1947) was thoroughly traditional in his commentary (esp. vols. 3-6 of Tafhīm al-Qur’ān, see F. Abbot and C. Adams), relying on medieval authorities like al-Bayḍāwī and al-Nīsābūrī. Bayḍāwī was once again established as the founding text in South Asia. Scores of Urdu traditional “commentaries” (ḥāshiyyas) on al-Bayḍāwī have appeared in the last century alone. As in Martin Luther’s reforming exegesis, the rejection or marginalization of traditional works is still considered an indication/proclamation of modernization, and in the western academia it has found a remarkable revival, for example, in Angelika Neuwirth, calling for “detaching the Qur’anic text from Islamic tradition” and that the Islamic “tradition must be left out” (Der Koran Band 1 Frühmekkanische Suren). The radical desire that the medieval scholars can be silenced out of any scholarly dialogue does not appear to be much different from the approach of hardliner Muslim exegetes who anathematize the referencing of western academic works as “heretic” or “Islamophobic,” and these trends are likely to provoke an increased reliance on tradition.

The presentation will focus on the semantic analysis of secularism in the Arab political and social space at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century. What terminology was used by Arabic speakers to express a secular worldview in the political sphere? What words were used? And what can the semantics of the term secularism teach us about the development of the concept? In historical and sociological literature, the secular idea is generally described using universal terms (such as secular, secularity, and secularism). Using foreign terminology to describe a local phenomenon creates a generalization that does not consider the nuances, differences, and stages accompanying the concept's development in non-Western languages. The main argument presented here is that exposing this local terminology will help us better understand the differences, lack of harmony, contradictions, and intellectual struggles that accompanied the emergence and formation of the concept in the Arabic language. The discussion will focus on two central stages in the life of “secularism”: the first period, in which the terminology focused on the social dimension and was mainly expressed through the concept of tolerance (tasāhul). At this stage, the legitimacy of separating religion from the state was established, justified, and presented as part of a general aspiration for progress, justice, equality, and political power. In the second period, the terminology of tolerance was replaced by a system of terms centered around ʿalmāniyya, which became the main marker of secularism. In this period, influenced by the impact of natural sciences on social sciences, the emergence of positivist epistemology, and progressive ideologies, ʿalmāniyya signified a holistic worldview and way of life. The presentation will focus on these two stages along a historical timeline from Ottoman reforms to World War I.