The paper briefly discusses the eco-religious teachings and practices of Prophet Muḥammad (peace be on him) and then connects them with the environmental sustainability of Dhaka city. It also explains why the Prophetic ecological guidelines are relevant to the restoration of Dhaka city’s ecological sustainability and how a Muslim-majority city like Dhaka can really benefit from the Prophetic ecological teachings to solve its environmental problems. Based on the literature review and contextual analysis methods, the article correlates the Prophetic ecological teachings and practices with the environmental issues of the city. In so doing, the study presents an alternative approach to the solution of Dhaka city’s environmental problems in the light of the Prophetic traditions. By growing awareness of ecological essentiality and motivating the city dwellers and administrators to the city’s ecological sustainability, the paper contributes to the ecologically friendly development of the city and to the enrichment of the field of religion and ecology.

This research examines Pakistan’s framework for paying compensation to crime victims, defined in Section 544-A of the Criminal Procedure Code, 1898. It brings to light an important flaw (i.e., the lack of an explicit mechanism for the quantification of compensation awards). A review of pertinent legal precedents shows glaring disparities and possible inequities arising from the lack of a standardized mechanism. To fill this gap, we look at the Islamic concept of diyah as a potential basis for an equal and efficient system. Our proposed model brings forth some of the essential features of diyah, such as emphasizing punishment for criminals, facilitating reconciliation and mediation among affected parties, and ensuring robust judicial checks and transparency. We aspire to improve on the inadequacies of the current system through these principles. However, we understand that the feasibility of bringing into operation a framework based on diyah remains uncertain. Challenges involve coping with the complexity of integrating Islamic and secular legal traditions, guaranteeing fairness and preventing discrimination, and attaining common acceptance by the parties. Ultimately, this research contends that incorporating diyah principles into Pakistan’s victim compensation framework offers a promising pathway towards greater fairness, consistency, and social cohesion within the criminal justice system. This, in turn, can enhance access to justice for victims and contribute to a more just and equitable society.

Fatema Mernissi (b. 1940–d. 2015) (spelled Fatima in her publications prior to 1997) was a Moroccan sociologist and an influential feminist writer and activist in the Arab world. Mernissi was born into a middle-class family in 1940 in Fes, Morocco, during the French Protectorate. She received her primary education in a school established by the nationalists. After high school, she began undergraduate studies at Mohammed V University (MVU), Rabat, in political science in 1959, which she interrupted realizing her vocation for sociology. Thanks to a scholarship, she went to Paris, France, to study sociology in 1964 at the Sorbonne University. In 1970, she left the Sorbonne for Brandeis University, Massachusetts, from which she was granted a PhD in 1974. Mernissi returned the same year to Morocco, obtaining a teaching position at MVU, which she kept until 1984, the year she joined the Institut de Recherche Scientifique, Rabat, as a research associate. Mernissi was a prolific writer, authoring over sixteen books, some of which have been translated into over twenty-five languages. Her early feminist writings were secular and socialist in outlook, targeting both Islam for its misogyny and capitalist development for its gender-blindness, and foregrounding the intersection of both systems in producing the marginalization of women. As a sociologist, she undertook pioneering fieldwork in the late 1970s and early 1980s, mapping women’s work by conducting lengthy interviews with rural and lower-class working women. In addition to her academic publications, she also contributed articles to Moroccan magazines and periodicals and accompanied the creation of several feminist organizations and projects. Mernissi is also credited with introducing women’s studies in Morocco as early as the beginning of the 1980s, having created several research groups on the themes of gender and the family. In the second half of the 1980s, Mernissi shifted her secularist standpoint on Islam to adopt a more sympathetic position to the religion, arguing that Islam’s fundamental message is egalitarian, but that it has been distorted by male interpretation, and that it is the task of contemporary Muslim women to reread the foundational texts to produce more women-friendly interpretations. This position has been identified as exemplifying “Islamic feminism,” inspiring and setting the stage for a transnational movement of Muslim women engaged in reclaiming Islam. Since the late 1990s, in the context of the first and second Gulf Wars, Mernissi’s work marked a new shift, producing scholarships marked by a more frontal critique of Orientalist discourses and writings that aim at promoting local civil society and youth. Mernissi was the recipient of prestigious awards such as the Prince of Asturias Award in 2003 and the Erasmus Prize in the Netherlands in 2004. The Guardian ranked her among the top one hundred most influential women in the world in 2011.

This paper explores the Qur’ānic concept of covenants through a legal lens, presenting a structured framework to examine the Qur’ān’s assurances, directives, and obligations as legally cognizable agreements. By integrating theological scholarship with principles of modern contract law, the study identifies Qur’ānic covenants as foundational to divine-human interaction. Through detailed analysis, the paper categorizes these covenants into overarching universal commitments, legal relationships with nonbelievers, and a comprehensive array of believer-specific agreements, including personal, social, and worldly obligations. Emphasizing the Qur’ān’s unique legal architecture, the research illustrates how covenants resemble modern contractual elements such as offer, acceptance, and consideration while maintaining the Qur’ān’s spiritual and transcendental essence. The findings highlight the Qur’ān’s capacity to regulate moral and ethical conduct internally, independent of external legal systems, underscoring its relevance to contemporary faith-based and secular frameworks. This interdisciplinary approach offers profound insights into the Qur’ānic message, reaffirming its role as a self-sustaining system of accountability and ethical universality.

Sufi interpretations of the Qur’ān aim to justify a mystic view of the God-human-universe relationship, focusing on the Qur’ānic verses. This paper studies controversies related to the interpretations of the Qur’ān by the Wujūdiyyah Sufis of Malay in the seventeenth-century Acheh and the Malay Archipelago. Their interpretations were pantheistic according to their opponent, the Shaykh al-Islām of Acheh, Nūr al-Dīn al-Rānīrī (d. 1658). Al-Rānīrī challenged the teachings of the Wujūdiyyah Sufis to cleanse Sufism from pantheistic views. The text chosen, al-Fatḥ al-Mubīn ‘alā ’l-Mulḥidīn (A Clear Victory against the Heretics) is a Jawi text written by al-Rānīrī before he left Acheh in 1446 for India. The Wujūdiyyah Sufis interpreted the Qur’ānic verses to support their ideas. In response, al-Rānīrī reinterpreted the same verses to demonstrate the flaws found in their teachings. Issues of reinterpretation, authoritative interpretation, and cogency are clearly expressed in the text. The article provides an overview of the seventeenth-century Malay Sufism which the contemporary scholars of the Islamics often ignore. The paper begins by giving a background of the controversy and proceeds to discuss arguments articulated by al-Rānīrī for a reinterpretation of the Qur’ānic texts misinterpreted by the Wujūdiyyah Sufis, in his quest for upholding the true Sufi view. Whenever possible, a comparative view of the teachings and statements of Ibn al-‘Arabī (d. 1240 CE) is brought into the analysis.

BOOK REVIEWS 536 leadership as a religious intellectual at a critically challenging time for Muslims in South Asia. Omar's Prophet al-Khiḍr is a highly valuable addition to the literature on Khiḍr because of Omar's insightful and nuanced discussions, careful and thorough research, robust compilation of references and footnotes, and the synthetic overview, the book provides a multivalent and longstanding religio-spiritual resource that is the Khiḍr story. It is a somewhat short book: at 139 pages total, 30 pages are footnotes and 16 the works-cited and index. Nonetheless, it makes clear that the Khiḍr story is deeply resonant with important themes and questions surrounding knowledge and how the divine makes it accessible to humans. The book also makes clear that the Khiḍr story remains alive because it offers infinite possibilities for the interpretation of themes central to Islamic piety ranging from the lofty to the mundane. Overall, readers can take from Omar's highly engaging and nuanced study an increased appreciation for the power and influence of the Khiḍr story in Islamic tradition as well as a broader view of central themes in Islam that the Khiḍr narrative and symbology-and questions surrounding themcan illuminate.

Islamic scholars have made several efforts to translate the Qur’ān into various languages of the world, with English being the most prominent target language. This article uses textual analysis to study translated verses of the Qur’ān and shows that the predominant result of subjectivity analysis was objectivity by a contribution of 63% with a preponderant non-ironic tone. There is a close balance between the topic categories of entity and concept in the sentiment analysis and agreement in different textual elements polarity of 72% unipolarity. Interestingly, the verses with positive polarity outweigh those with negative polarity, with a significant number of verses reflecting non-polar texts. A topic sentiment analysis of the verses showed the prevalence of non-polarity over the positive, negative, neutral, strong positive, then strong negative polarity. Sūrat al-Baqarah holds the greatest polarity count. This investigation paves the way for a series of in-depth analyses for the examination of religious texts. Also, it sheds light on the necessity of the control of the language translation of verses to deliver the same or close impression to that of the original religious text. Refinement of the text analysis algorithm may be required in the quality control of the translation. Nevertheless, the current study provides direct evidence of the future ability of this type of program to derive conclusions from religious texts in an acceptable manner.

In Islamic Law and Society: The Practice of Iftā' and Religious Institutions, Emine Enise Yakar explores critical aspects of the methodological pluralistic structure of fatwās in different societies and approaches of three fatwā institutions: Saudi Arabia's Dār al-Iftā' (The General Presidency of Scholarly Research and Ifta), Turkey's Diyanet (The General Presidency of Religious Affairs), and The Fiqh Council of North America (FCNA) based in the USA. The book brings together diverse theoretical discussions and practical examples which offer a comparative analysis of contextual factors and the attitudes of scholars to provide solutions applicable to their relevant societies. The central theme of the book is to scrutinize the methodological diversities of the institutions, the contextual and dynamic complexities regarding the approaches of scholars living in Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and North America, and the underlying influences of madhhab (school of law) affiliation, social values, cultural practices, and legal and political systems on the institutions' fatwās. Underscoring the role of fatwā institutions in the contemporary world, the book is composed of five detailed chapters. In the introductory part, Yakar provides an eloquent synopsis regarding the historical developments that took place in fatwā-writing, enlightens the readers regarding the selection criteria of these institutions, and mentions the idiosyncratic characters of Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the USA from religio-legal perspectives. For the first three chapters, the author pursues a specific outline in which she respectively introduces the formational process of institutions, the hierarchical structure of fatwā boards, methodological approaches of the institutions, and divergent relationships between the scholars and governments in the mentioned countries. Since these chapters mainly provide descriptive information and theoretical structure, each chapter makes the reader conceptualize the contextual circumstances and realize the methodological diversity within the scope of Islamic law. For example, the fatwā of Dār al-Iftā' regarding alcohol and drugs evaluates the crime

Zumrat al-Mu’minīn (the Believers’ Group), also known as Makondoro, is a group of conservative Arabic-Islamic scholars in Yorubaland, a region in Western Nigeria. When studying, teaching, and professing their Arabic and Islamic knowledge, they utilize a pedagogical method of discipleship that links students with their teachers and shapes their learning. They have devised strategies to retain this method, such as creating epistemological networks that have earned them authority in Yorubaland since the middle of the twentieth century. Although modernization has held sway in Arabic-Islamic education of the region post-independence, the Makondoro maintain and preserve their ways. Drawing on ethnographic research, participant observation, and personal interactions with scholars and students of the Makondoro, this article seeks to understand their pedagogical dynamics in the last fifty years when they came into prominence in major cities of Western Nigeria.