Research

This project seeks to examine the potential for Islamic legal principles – such as human dignity, fair industrial relations, and commercial integrity – to contribute to globalisation’s reformation. Scholars within the disciplines of Islamic law and Islamic philosophy have a long history of engagement with issues of equity and relations between nations. What impact has this engagement produced on the law of nations? Have these scholars achieved a balance between the common good and individual freedom (both of which are highly and equally valued within the Qur’an)? If so, how have their findings influenced trade relations between nations, both Islamic and non-Islamic? In considering these questions, this project is to examine the feasibility of merging legal systems – or at least principles thereof – so as to produce more representative and more equitable trade agreements.

Is a philosophical approach to religious commitment viable? This question has been examined numerous times, but never from the angle of the 'reflective Muslim'. The reflective Muslim describes a person of Islamic faith who has come to acknowledge that people of other religious and non-religious persuasions are as educated and concerned with seeking truth and avoiding error as they themselves are. This project aims to connect the tradition of Islamic philosophical thought with contemporary debates in the Philosophy of Religion.

Khalida Hussain is a contemporary Pakistani Muslim woman writing in Urdu. For her writing is a means of survival of the inner life which is constantly threatened by her everyday circumstances; and it is a means of self discovery. This project seeks to translate and interpret her works as a form of feminist spirituality.

This project approaches the question of aurat and fashion in contemporary Indonesia with an interest in traditional- and new-media contributions to imagining, modeling and constructing femininity within a consumer (and consumerist) demographic that strongly embraces veiling as a popular clothing choice.