Login or Register to make a submission.

The Journal of Islamic Law is currently not accepting submission. Please check back in Fall 2024. 

 The Journal of Islamic Law invites papers that study how political authority and governance function as a branch of Islamic law and their intersection with fiqh. From the Islamic Middle Ages to the present day, the administrative-political rubrics of sìyāsā (governance) and qānūn (sultanic law) have shaped several spheres of Islamic law, among them criminal justice, financial administration, and courts of readdress. The Abbasids and the Ottomans used sìyāsā and qānūn respectively to legitimize their legislative authority and non-jurisprudential procedures. Colonialism or European imperialism built on this political-religious dichotomy and created new legal separations in the form of Islamic Law and the laws of European empires.

Scholars have debated the contours of sìyāsā and qānūn, with some declaring these administrative-political approaches as aligned with jurisprudence (fiqh), and others referring to them as extrajudicial frameworks rooted in foreign and external influences. But we still know little about the origins of sìyāsā, the continuity between it and qānūn, and the reasonings that underpinned these non-jurisprudential practices. Further work remains to be done on how colonialism and European imperialism transformed these political-legal dynamics in the Islamic world. This includes a thorough investigation into the extent to which modern interactions between political authority and Islamic law diverge from, or adhere to, historical paradigms, as well as an analysis of contemporary interpretations and applications of these frameworks.

This special issue calls for work that will expand our understanding of the evolution and/or functioning of sìyāsā and qānūn and other forms of government law in relation to Islamic law, from the birth of Islam to the present day. Thematically, we invite papers that show the adaptation, borrowing, and creativity involved in the development of governmental law in the Islamic world and its relationship with fiqh, especially in the context of authority, continuity, and expediency. We welcome papers that place these evolutions in comparison with other global articulations of governmental law, such as Roman law, Imperial Chinese law, and common law, with the aim to begin to develop a more comprehensive understanding of how Islamic law and governance shaped each other.

We seek articles of up to 15,000 words. To signal interest, please submit a proposed title and abstract of 250–500 words by February 5, 2024, using our online submissions portal. Once accepted, soon thereafter, the deadline for the submission of full drafts is February 26, 2024, after which the paper goes through a process of peer review, a final decision on acceptance, editing, and publication. This special issue of the Journal of Islamic Law is edited by Mohammed Allehbi (mallehbi@law.harvard.edu), research fellow at Harvard Law School’s Program in Islamic Law, and will be published in April 2024. For further questions, please contact us at pil@law.harvard.edu.

 

We accept scholarship submission to the  Journal in Islamic Law for new scholarship in Islamic law, as well as for its dynamic Forum designed to feature scholarly responses, debates, or new developments in Islamic law scholarship or at the intersection of Islamic law and data science. Submissions, unless otherwise noted for Special Issues, may take many forms, including: Articles, Essays, Case Briefs, Student Notes, Book Reviews, and Data Science Reviews.

Articles & Essays

Articles present sustained works of original research on some aspect of Islamic or comparative law; essays are usually narrower in scope. While the line between them is not rigid, we recommend that article submissions have fewer than 25,000 words, including footnotes; and essay submissions have fewer than 8,000 words, including footnotes.

Case Briefs

Case Briefs present the basic facts of a recent cases related to Islamic law in Muslim-majority or Muslim-minority countries. Submissions should have fewer than 1,500 words, including footnotes. 

Student Notes

Notes are student-written works typically available to Harvard students. Notes submissions should have fewer than 8,000 words, including footnotes.

Book Reviews

Book reviews of books published within the last two years will be accepted (published 2019 - 2020). Book review submissions should have fewer than 1,500 words, including footnotes.

Data Science Articles, Essays, or Reviews

Data science articles or essays present on data science and digital humanities projects that work at the intersections of data science methods and Islamic law, including legal history. Articles or essays should have 10,000 - 25,000 words, including footnotes. 

Data science reviews assess and/or critically analyze new data science and digital humanities tools, including databases and other relevant data portals, that work at the intersections of data science methods and Islamic law, including legal history. Submissions should have fewer than 1,500 words, including footnotes.

Symposia / Forum

Submissions for thematic symposia on recent developments featured on the Forum are by invitation only. 

As part of the submission process, authors are required to check off their submission's compliance with all of the following items, and submissions may be returned to authors that do not adhere to these guidelines.

  • The submission has not been previously published, nor is it before another journal for consideration (or an explanation has been provided in Comments to the Editor).
  • The submission file is in OpenOffice, Microsoft Word, or RTF document file format.
  • Where available, URLs for the references have been provided.
  • The text is single-spaced; uses a 12-point font; employs italics, rather than underlining (except with URL addresses); and all illustrations, figures, and tables are placed within the text at the appropriate points, rather than at the end.
  • The text adheres to the stylistic and bibliographic requirements outlined in the Author Guidelines.