Ulama in Islamic Law‐Making and Adjudication in Contemporary Egypt

The article examines the legislative and judicial tasks of Islamic jurists and how they carried it out in constitutional or general legal structure. While the Pakistani experiment was inspired by the Iranian model of jurists' involvement in legislatures, Egypt took a different path by not recognizing any official role for Islamic jurists with ambiguous recognition of Islamic jurisprudence. The legislative role could take the form of incorporating Islamic jurists into the legislature, establishing a committee partially made up of Islamic jurists, or handing over some legislative task to an Islamic jurisprudential institution. Despite the fact that Islamization was intended to respond to the people's requests, it employed autocratic and authoritarian mechanisms. The project attempted to replace the typical class of socially recognized jurists with appointed committees entrusted with Islamic codification. The experiment was challenged for its operation and its Islamicity but never introduced Shari'a courts or Islamic clerical legislation.     

Abandonment,Authority, and Religious Continuity in Post-Classical Greece

Scholars have frequently invoked the abandonment of Early Christian basilicas in the sixth and seventh centuries as key evidence for the end of antiquity in Greece. The standard narrative treats the archaeological evidence for abandonment as the physical manifestation of decline recorded in textual sources. The neat equivalency between archaeology and text ignores the role that abandonment plays in the narrative strategies of the textual sources. By reexamining the tie between text and archaeology, we can read the life cycle of the Early Christian basilica in Greece more critically and consequently expand our understanding of this dynamic period in Greek history.     

清代新疆伊斯兰教教派问题刍议

关于新疆维吾尔族伊斯兰教教派性质问题 ,学术界有人认为 ,清代前期是苏非派居主流地位 ,而晚近以来的逊尼派是由苏非派转变而来的。本文不赞成此种观点 ,认为有清一代新疆维吾尔社会如同今日一样 ,都是传统逊尼派性质 ,不存在苏非派曾居主流之势 ;清前期的和卓家族虽出自苏菲神秘主义教团 ,但并未改变当地伊斯兰教的传统逊尼派属性 ,进而认为现代新疆那种在宗教礼仪等方面与传统逊尼派有明显差别的苏非派(狭义依禅派 )是清末民初出现于南疆的 ,此前没有此类教派存在的明显迹象。     

Past Contradictions,Contemporary Dilemmas: Egypt's 2013 Coup and Early Islamic History

To what extent is the present of Muslim societies influenced by their past? How do politics and historiography relate to each other in medieval and contemporary Islam? More specifically, can events from early Islamic history help us understand current events in Muslim countries? By discussing how some of these remote events have contributed to the emergence of certain political views, this article argues that they are still relevant to the present in Muslim countries (in our case here, Egypt) and can indeed help us understand an important part of the picture of a recent event that may have a long lasting influence on the present and future of both the country and the region where it occurred. This event was the removal of Egypt's first ever democratically elected president by a military coup on July 3, 2013, one year after he assumed office. By examining the various religious and political hermeneutic strategies used by some medieval and modern Sunni scholars to support or condemn certain acts of rebellion while opposing others, the article seeks to demonstrate — through the comparison of some of these strategies — the contradictory positions of medieval Sunni scholars regarding events from early Islam, and thus the dilemmas that their modern counterparts face when dealing with contemporary events.