[INDEFINITELY POSTPONED DUE TO THE COVID-19 SITUATION]
MIISSC Symposium 2020
Preliminary Programme
This symposium is free and open to the public
Venue: Thomson House Ballroom, McGill University
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Thursday, March 26th
Registration and Breakfast – 08:00-08:15
Opening Remarks – 08:15-08:30
Session 1 – 08:30-10:15 AM
Islamic Law and Qur’anic Studies
Musleh, Samira (PhD Student, Department of Communication Studies, University of Minnesota – Twin Cities)
“Women’s Work under Capitalism and Islam: A Decolonial Islamic Feminist Reading”
Pizzi, Paola (PhD Candidate, Istituto Italiano di Studi Orientali, Sapienza Università di Roma)
“From the Conditioned Ǧihād to the Death of War: The Development of the Doctrine of Nonviolence in the Thought of the Syrian Preacher Ǧawdat Saʿīd (b. 1931)”
Vahedi, Massoud (PhD Candidate, Department of Political Science, York University)
“A Ḥanbalī Scholar’s Reply to a Pseudo-Mujtahid: al-Saffārīnī’s Epistle on Taqlīd”
Zaidi, S. Hassan Arif (PhD Student, Institute of Islamic Studies, McGill University)
“Aristotelian Logic, Arabic Grammar and the Claim to Meaning”
Moderator: Ahmad Fathan Aniq
Discussant: Dr Michelle Hartman (McGill University)
COFFEE BREAK – 10:15-10:30
Session 2 – 10:30 AM -12:00 PM
Islam in Indonesia
Aniq, Ahmad Fathan (PhD Student, Institute of Islamic studies, McGill University)
“Jihād in the Eyes of Indonesian Islamists in the Post New Order Era”
Fina, Lien Iffah Naf’atu (PhD Candidate, Divinity School, University of Chicago)
“In Search of Contemporary Sufi Tafsīr: Some Selections from Emha Ainun Najib's Tadabbur of the Qur'an”
French, Sawyer Martin (MA Student, Divinity School, University of Chicago)
“Both Traditionalist and Progressive: Articulating a Marxist Fiqh in Indonesia”
Ng, Kelvin (PhD Candidate, Department of History, Yale University)
“Universalisms in Motion: Islam in/and Marxism in the Dutch East Indies, 1915-1950”
Moderator: M. Fariduddin Attar
Discussant: Dr Erik Martinez Kuhonta (McGill University)
LUNCH BREAK – 12:00-1:00 PM
Session 3 – 1:00-2:30 PM
Imami Shi‘i Approaches to Being in The World
Al-Hilli, Yousif (PhD Student, Department of Theology and Religion, University of Birmingham)
“Between Religion and Politics: The Role of the Shia Clerical Mediators in Iraq Since 2003”
Mansouri, Mohammad Amin (PhD Candidate, Department for the Study of Religion, University of Toronto)
“Astrology, Sainthood, and Esoteric Numerology: Some Remarks on Sayyid Ḥaydar Āmulī’s Commentary of Ibn al-ʿArabī”
Vafaeikia, Parnia (PhD Candidate, Department for the Study of Religion, University of Toronto)
“Anthropology of Batin: Beyond the Paradigm of Self-Cultivation”
Moderator: Sherwan Ali
Discussant: Dr Aun Hasan Ali (University of Colorado Boulder)
COFFEE BREAK – 2:30-2:45 PM
Session 4 – 2:45-4:15 PM
Magic in Islam and Contemporary Muslim Lives
McCabe, Lillian (PhD Candidate, Department of Religious Studies, Yale University)
“Admirative Magic: The Evil Eye According to Ibn Sīnā and Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī”
Oddi, Philip (PhD Student, Department of Humanities, York University)
“Bill-21: Canadian Secularism in Quebec Policy”
Smith, Sofia (PhD Student, Department of Political Science, University of Chicago)
“#Da‘wa: Religious Education and Parasocial Relationships on Instagram”
Zora, Samar (PhD Candidate, Department of Anthropology, Duke University)
“Sihr Practices in Contemporary Kuwait”
Moderator: Faisal Mairiga
Discussant: Dr Milad Odabaei (McGill University)
COFFEE BREAK – 4:15-4:30 PM
Session 5 – 4:30-6:15 PM
Imperial Encounters in Africa and the Ottoman World
Abdelshamy, Sarah (MA Student, Institute of Islamic Studies, McGill University)
“Unspeakable Islam: The Politics of Mourning and the Afterlife of the Middle Passage”
Chowdhury, Mahdi (MPhil Student, Faculty of History, University of Cambridge)
“Kamaran Sickness”: Cultural Histories of an Ottoman Hajj Quarantine, 1881-1914
Elewa, Mahmoud (PhD Student, Department of History, Concordia University)
“Becoming Free in the Age of Abolition: Enslaved African Pearl Divers, Resistance and British Manumission in Twentieth-Century Muscat”
Metin, S. Berk (MA Student, Institute of Area Studies, Leiden University)
“Writing History for the Sublime State: Maḥmūd II, Centralization, and Şānī-zāde’s Tārīḫ”
Sarıkaya, Cafer (PhD Candidate, Department of History, Boğaziçi University)
“An Ottoman Woman Writer in the 1893 Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition: Fatma Aliye Hanım”
Moderator: Sumaira Nawaz
Discussant: Dr Sumeyra Aslıhan Gürbüzel (McGill University)
Dinner for Participants at (Restaurant Venue: TBA) – 7:00 pm
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Friday, March 27th
BREAKFAST – 08:00-08:15 AM
Session 6 – 8:15-10:00
Mysticism and Piety in South Asia
Hynd, Peter (PhD Candidate, Department of History and Classical Studies, McGill University)
“Alcohol, Excise, and Islam in Late 19th Century British India”
Liepsner, Nura Sophia (PhD Candidate, Department of Religion, Princeton University)
“Writing the Self: Nuzhat al-Khawāṭir’s Construction of an Islamic Tradition in India”
Montpellier, Elliot Marcel (PhD Candidate, Department of South Asia Studies / Department of Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania)
“Setting the Prayer Scene: Negotiating the Visual Culture of namaz in Pakistani Television Dramas”
Yamani, Fidahussain (MA Student, Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies, Columbia University)
“Syedna Taher Saifuddin’s Speeches: A Glimpse into Dawoodi Bohra Muslim Political Thought in Post-colonial India”
Moderator: Sabeena Shaikh
Discussant: Dr Wilson Chacko Jacob (Concordia University)
COFFEE BREAK – 10:15-10:30 AM
Session 6 – 10:30 AM -12:00 PM
On the Frontiers of Persianate Selves
Ghoreishi, Marziyeh (PhD Student, Department of Languages and Cultures, University of Western Ontario)
“Constructing the Nation through Social Criticism: Alienation in the Travel Diary of Ebrahim Beyg”
Kuras, Eva (PhD Candidate, Department of Comparative and World Literature, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
“The Circulating Eurasian Romance: Varqeh o Golshah and Floire et Blancheflor”
Leong, Amanda Caterina (PhD Student, Department of Interdisciplinary Humanities, University of California, Merced)
“Contrasting Patriarchal Kingship: The Humayunnama as a Mirror for Princesses”
Moderator: Aqsa Ijaz
Discussant: Dr Prashant Keshavmurthy (McGill University)
LUNCH BREAK – 12:00-1:00 PM
Session 6 – 1:00-2:45 PM
Avicenna and his Interlocutors
Alattar, Zain (MA Student, Institute of Islamic Studies, McGill University)
“Christian Peripateticism in Abbasid Baghdad; Yaḥyā ibn ‘Adī on Divine Foreknowledge”
Da Silva, Mateus Domingues (PhD Student, Arabic Studies, University of Sao Paulo/McGill)
“Self-subsistent Quiddities and Divine Knowledge according to Suhrawardī’s Metaphysics of Lights”
Klinger, Dustin D (PhD Candidate, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations / Department of Philosophy, Harvard University)
“The Analysis of Atomic Propositions Across Avicenna’s Main Works”
Lessman, Michael (PhD Candidate, Department of Religious Studies, Yale University)
“Abū’l-Barakāt Account of Time and its Neoplatonic Background”
Moderator: Gabriel Larivière
Discussant: Dr Alison Laywine (McGill University)
COFFEE BREAK – 02:45 PM – 3:00 PM
Session 9 – 3:00-04:45 PM
Islam and Secularity
Abbasi, Rushain (PhD Candidate, Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations, Harvard University)
“The Pollination Report and its Interpreters: Glimpses of Secularity in Medieval Sunni Understandings of the Prophet”
Abusarah, Mohannad (MA Student, Department of Religious Studies, University of Toronto)
“From Aristotle to Kant: An Analysis of the Kantian influence on Mohammad ‘Abdu’s Thought”
Allsopp, Jack (MA Student, Global and Imperial History, University of Oxford)
“Indo-Islamic Kingship in Practice: Patronage, Performance and Appropriation in Early Modern South Asian Religious Politics”
Sabri, Zahra (PhD Student, Institute of Islamic Studies, McGill University)
“Adab, Akhlāq, Sharī‘at, and, Secularity in the Islamic Ethical Tradition”
Moderator: Amir Hossein Pournamdar Sarcheshmeh
Discussant: Dr Armando Salvatore (McGill University)
COFFEE BREAK – 04:45–5:00 PM
Keynote Address – 5:00-6:30 PM
Dr Jonathan AC Brown (Georgetown University)
“Mazalim Courts and Islamic Legal Reform”
A major challenge facing legal and ethical traditions occurs when their mechanisms of producing norms in the past or their bodies or law seem to clash with the expectations of justice, whether this clash seems novel or of ancient date. This challenge is even more intense when the normative or legal tradition in question claims divine origin or sanction, begging the question of what sources of justice even have the right to object to it. Muslims have responded to this challenge - to moments of dissonance between the Shariah and their sense of justice - in various ways throughout Islamic history. This talk will discuss some of the ways they have theorized this dissonance and how they have proposed reconciling it (or not). In particular, it will examine the history of the main institutional mechanism for such reconciliation, namely the mazalim (grievance) court.
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Organising Committee
Ahmad Fathan Aniq
Aqsa Ijaz
Faisal Mairiga
Gabriel Larivière
Sumaira Nawaz
Zahra Sabri