MODERN CHALLENGES TO ISLAMIC LAW: EXPLORING NEW PATHWAYS

International Conference at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law, Hamburg

6 - 7 June 2024

CONFERENCE IN HONOUR OF SHAHEEEN SARDAR ALI

With this international conference we want to honour the unparalleled and intellectual contribution to Islamic law scholarship by the most distinguished and leading scholar Professor Shaheen Sardar Ali. Shaheen Sardar Ali is Chair at the School of Law, University of Warwick, United Kingdom and has held professorial positions at the University of Peshawar, Pakistan and the Faculty of Law, University of Oslo, Norway. She has served as the Rector, National Academy for Higher Education, Pakistan. In 2000 she was appointed as the first chairperson of the National Commission on the Status of Women, Pakistan and Cabinet Minister for Health, Population Welfare and Women’s Development, Government of the North West Frontier Province, Pakistan. Shaheen Sardar Ali has also held various positions at the United Nations. She has been Vice-Chair of the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention. Currently she is serving as member of the United Nations Fact-Finding Mission on the Islamic Republic of Iran set up by the Human Rights Council. 

Professor Ali has published extensively in Islamic law, international human rights law including human rights of women and children, and family law. Leaning on her latest monograph Modern Challenges to Islamic Law (Cambridge University Press, 2016) which has been widely acclaimed as a ground-breaking contribution to Islamic law scholarship, the conference takes up the urgent issues of modernity that Islamic law is faced with in various ways. These include Islamic constitutionalism, family law reform in the Muslim world, and the pressing topic of the epistemology of Islamic law by looking at how Islamic law is being taught. Eminent Islamic law scholars, academics, judges, and representatives of non-governmental organisations from the United States of America, Europe, the United Kingdom, Nigeria, and Egypt will discuss the challenges that Islamic law faces in the classroom, in the courtroom, and in the streets.