Proceedings of the 1st International Seminar on Sharia, Law and Muslim Society (ISSLAMS 2022)

Conference name: Proceedings of the 1st International Seminar on Sharia, Law and Muslim Society (ISSLAMS 2022)
Date: 22 September 2022
Location: Surakarta, Indonesia (Online)
Website: https://syariah.uinsaid.ac.id/isslams/

On behalf of the ISSLAMS committee, I would like to welcome you all to the multicultural city of Solo, the heart of Java. I hope you enjoy the warmth and the hospitality of its people. This conference is the second event. The first one was conducted in 2018. However, we design to make this conference a biennial event. We plan to make it again in the upcoming 2 years.

We are delighted to receive hundreds of. It was indeed not easy to make selection of them, but we have to decide. As a result, 31 papers were selected. Congratulations. This conference is aimed at bringing together scholars, intellectuals, and researchers whose work pays attention to the development of Islamic law in the various parts of the world.

The theme of today’s conference is ‘The Intersections of Sharia and State-Law in the Modern World.’ We chose to take this theme considering the fact that despite the multifaceted nature of Sharia either as God’s will, religious law, or jurists’ interpretation (fiqh), Muslim states in the course of the first half of the twentieth century attempted to transform Sharia into ‘Islamic law.’ The need for the transformation of Sharia into Islamic law becomes noticeable when the modern state demands a more authoritative and decisive statement of law. What is now known as Islamic law is a result of the intense negotiations of Islamic legal knowledge and the state authority in the modern period.

According to Wael B. Hallaq, a renowned scholar, Sharia has become an ‘episteme’ that suffered a ‘structural death’ following the dawn of modernity in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Its resurgence is remarkable across a number of jurisdictions from Muslim-majority nations in Middle East and Southeast Asia to Muslim-minority societies in Western Europe and North America. Across these jurisdictions, the relationship between Sharia and state-law is central. It includes Sharia-state encounters, notably in the form of (state) Islamic law, in the field of family law, which is often asserted as the ‘core’ or ‘last stronghold’ of sharia, and other substantive areas of law, such as Islamic economics, Islamic philanthropy, and also jinayah (Islamic penal law). Regardless of their differences in their own specific context, these areas somehow manage to secure an importance place in the modern days. It involves different loci of authority to interpret, legislate, and enforce Sharia.

I wish you a fruitful discussion and a productive conference.

Scientific Committee of ISSLAMS 2022