Translating Islamic Law: Mobility, History, Solidarity

Translation encapsulates a series of distinct moves in the study of Islamic law, each with its own ethical and methodological implications. These implications are often obscured when we emphasise textual and discursive translation, at the expense of institutional and material processes. This paper discusses the work that translation does in, and to, Islamic legal studies, including but not limited to: 1. shifting between semantic fields of meaning; 2. legal actors translating between idioms and institutions of law; and 3. facilitating (and resisting) the emergence of ‘universal’ categories and fields of law. It ends with a reflection on the implications of these translative dynamics for teaching, writing and publishing across languages and contexts in contemporary Islamic legal studies, considering translation as collaborative labour, in the context of displacement, migration, and war.

This is an online event. It will be live streamed on the Centre for Ethics YouTube Channel on Monday, November 23. Channel subscribers will receive a notification at the start of the live stream. (For other events in the series, and to subscribe, visit YouTube.com/c/CentreforEthics.)

Iza Hussin
Cambridge University
Politics & International Studies

Mon, Nov 23, 2020
12:30 PM - 01:45 PM
Centre for Ethics, University of Toronto
200 Larkin