The decision on whether to hold this activity in person will depend upon the health situation at the time. The number who may attend has been reduced, and mask use is required throughout the entire event. Thank you for your patience. 

Taking part in the event along with Jalloul will be sociologist Manuel Castells and Delfina Serrano, the series’ coordinator and a senior scientist at the CSIC’s Institute of Languages and Cultures of the Mediterranean and Near East. The event will be presented by Pedro Martínez-Avial, the General Director of Casa Árabe.

Dr. Hana Jalloul Muro will analyze different aspects of the Shari’a, understood as a sacred law during the caliphates, and its separation of legal and political spheres, as well as its more contemporary aspects (as of the twentieth century), its use in Islamist discourse, its use in the religious terminology of Islamist discourse and the process of politicization which it is currently undergoing.

Hana Jalloul Muro has a PhD from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid in the Department of International Relations and International Public Law. Master’s degree program on the European Union. EU Resource Management and International Relations. She has worked as a Junior Expert on two European Commission projects in Lebanon, and as a political assistant for the European Union Election Observation Mission (EOM) for the elections to the Lebanese parliament (2009). A professor at several universities and in Spanish Master’s degree programs, she has been an advisor to the technical office of the National Government Delegate in Madrid and a member of Madrid’s Autonomous Regional Assembly. Now the Government of Spain’s State Secretary for Migration (2021), she is currently a Member of Parliament for the Autonomous Region of Madrid. Hana has given national and international conferences and has authored works published about the topics of radical and moderate Islamism, the deconstruction of radical Jihadist/Islamist discourses, initiatives for the prevention of radicalization leading to violence and de-radicalization, and international politics.  
Manuel Castells is a professor emeritus and chair of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. He is editor of the book “Muslim Europe or Euro-Islam?” (with Nezar Al-Sayyad), translated in Spain by Alianza Editorial in 2003.

Shatibi developed the theory of Maqasid in the context of the impasse to which Islamic legal reasoning had reached in the socio-economic context in al-Andalus in the fourteenth century. It was based on a critical analysis of the debates among the Sufis, theologians, and jurists on the limits of the sources, principles, and methods of reasoning in Islamic legal tradition.  The main point in this theory was that Maslaha, or human welfare was the foundational objective of Sharia. This objective is found in the intent  of God as lawgiver in his communication, legal obligation, and legal obedience. Inductive study of the sources of Sharia sources led him to conclude that the protection of the following five areas of human welfare are the objectives of Sharia: religion, life, reason, genealogy, and property. He explains this system of protection in terms of concentric circles of necessities, legal needs and cultural requirements supported by supplementary and complementary legal considerations.  Shatibi was opposed by his contemporary jurists except by his prominent disciples who continued following him in their writings. It was several centuries later in early twentieth century that Shatibi’s theory attracted the attention of  reformists and Islamic modernists. The theory provides way forward in areas like finance, economics, banking, management, bioethics, and environment  that were not considered strictly the domains of Islamic law. Critical studies by the traditionalists, and moderate Islamists also keeps this theory alive. My presentation is, however, limited to an introduction to al-Shatibi’s theory and its critical study by Tahir b. AshurPresently, an Ad Hoc judge of the Shariat Appellate Bench, Supreme Court of Pakistan, Justice Dr Muhammad Khalid Masud has been formerly the Chairman, Council of Islamic Ideology, Director General, Islamic Research Institute, International Islamic University, Islamabad, Pakistan, Academic Director  ISIM, and Professor of Islamic law at Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands, Distinguished  Professor of Islamic law, International Islamic University, Malaysia, and Senior Lecturer, Centre for Islamic Legal Studies, Ahmadu Bello University  Nigeria. His areas of research interests include  Islamic law, history of Islamic law in south Asia and Spain, Islamic political and legal theories, modernity, and contemporary Sharia Debates. In addition to more than 60 book sections and more than one hundred  research articles in journals of international repute, his major publications include Shatibi’s Philosophy of Islamic Law (1995), Iqbal’s Reconstruction of Ijtihad (1995), Shari’a Today (2013), edited and co-edited volumes Islamic Legal Interpretation (1996), Travelers in Faith (2000), Dispensing Justice in Islam (2006), Islam and Modernity (2009), Freedom of Expression in Islam (2021), and  Sharia in the Twenty First Century (forthcoming 2021).

Fernando Amérigo’s conference will analyze the makeup and development of the Agreement signed by the Islamic Commission of Spain and the Spanish State in 1992. The goal is to learn about the impact this agreement has had and its effect in terms of acknowledging and developing the right to religious freedom of Muslim citizens in Spain. A critical review of the agreement will be performed, highlighting those aspects necessary for better recognition of these rights, as well as the instruments necessary to guarantee the legal equality of Muslims with other citizens who follow other beliefs.

Fernando Amérigo is a professor at the Department of International Law, State Ecclesiastical Law and Philosophy of Law at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid’s School of Law. He has been the director of the Institute of Sciences of Religions at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (2012-2020). He was a founding member of the Spanish Society of Sciences of Religions, of which he was Secretary General (1999-2008) and Vice-President (2010-2018), and he is now the president of the that society’s legal section. He has written many publications on the right to freedom of conscience, dealing with issues such as conscientious objection, the use of religious symbols, foods based on reasons of belief, religious freedom and Islamic immigration, etc.

Intisar Rabb’s lecture examines the history of crime and punishment in Islamic societies, comparatively. In most studies of Islamic criminal law, the principles, practices, and justifications for punishment typically operate in siloes separated by a wide plain. This lecture explores the ground where they meet. This lecture focuses on the criminal law principles and practices in Umayyad Syria, ʿAbbasid Iraq, and Mamluk Egypt. In the process, she illustrates the most striking feature of medieval Islamic criminal: it featured a jurisprudence of doubt and lenity in contrast to political practices of control and severity.

Intisar A. Rabb is a Professor of Law, a Professor of History, and the faculty director of the Program in Islamic Law at Harvard Law School. She teaches and publishes on Islamic law and American criminal law in historical and modern contexts, with special focus on criminal law, comparative law of constitutional and statutory interpretation, and Islamic legal canons (qawāʿid fiqhiyya). Her publications including the monograph, Doubt in Islamic Law (Cambridge University Press 2015). She also serves as the editor-in-chief for the Journal of Islamic Law (journalofislamiclaw.com), the Islamic Law Blog (islamiclaw.blog), and SHARIAsource (beta.shariasource.com)—an online platform for facilitating new research on Islamic law using data science tools. She received a BA from Georgetown University, a JD from Yale Law School, and an MA and PhD from Princeton University. She has conducted research in Egypt, Iran, Syria, and elsewhere.

The conference will focus on the economic debates and, in particular, on the Islamic prohibition of interest (riba) which have existed within the framework of Islamic law throughout history, from medieval times to the present, as such discussions continue with regard to the development of Islamic banking, especially in terms of certain transactions whose lawfulness was already being discussed by Muslim legal experts centuries ago. The various methods that have been used to try to soften the prohibition of riba will be analyzed in order to provide an accurate portrait of the flexibility and adaptability which characterize Islamic law.

Adday Hernández is a post-doctoral researcher at the Institute of Languages and Cultures of the Mediterranean and Near East (ILC-CSIC). She is a specialist in Islamic economic law and relations between religions and has also performed research on the intellectual history of the Islamic West. She is currently contributing to the project “Teologia, pensiero economico e prassi commerciali: feneratio, ‘riba’ e tasso d’interesse fra cristianesimo e islam” (“Theology, economic thought and commercial practices: feneratio, ‘riba’ and interest rate in Christianity and Islam”), funded by FSCIRE and the Bank of Italy. The most significant of her latest publications include El valor del tiempo. Doctrina jurídica y práctica de la usura (riba) en el Occidente islámico medieval (Legal Doctrine and the Practice of Usury [‘riba’] in the Medieval Islamic West, Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica (2016); and El Kitab Al-riba de ʻAbd Al-Malik B. Ḥabib (m. 238/852): Early Legal Doctrine on Usury, Hispanic-Arab Sources 37, Madrid: CSIC (2017).

The purpose of this conference is to determine what degree of influence Islamic Law holds within Morocco’s Family Code (Mudawwana) and examine how this has evolved throughout the years, above all discussing topics which lead to greater inequality or discrimination against women. To do so, we will begin by discussing the first Personal Status Code enacted between 1956 and 1957, shortly after Morocco gained its independence, then move on to the minor reform in 1993 and end with the main contributions in the current Family Code, which dates back to 2004. In addition to such legal issues, we will also be discussing the main ideological debates over the place that shari’a should hold within this legislation as a theoretical and legal reference.

Carmelo Pérez Beltrán is a Professor of Arab and Islamic Studies with the University of Granada’s Department of Semitic Studies. He also coordinates the Contemporary Arab Studies Research Group and is the director of the journal Miscelánea de Estudios Árabes y Hebraicos. Arab-Islam Section, as well as being the director of the Emilio García Gómez Professorship at that same university.  Specializing in the sociology of the contemporary Arab world, his main line of research is the study of civil society, human rights and democratic processes in the Maghreb, with a special interest in the social and legal status of women and the legislative changes that have taken place since the events now referred to as the Arab Spring. The title of his latest publication is “Spanish Public Act 58/2017 on the elimination of violence against women in Tunisia: study and translation into Spanish,” Foro. Revista de Ciencias Jurídicas y Sociales, 2021, pp. 431-466.