BOOK LAUNCH COURSE: A HISTORY OF ISLAMIC CONSTITUTIONALISM

[PLEASE NOTE - The course is BOTH in person ONSITE in London and for those who can not attend in person can purchase the LIVE ONLINE STREAMING ticket to watch it from their device and those coming in person, should you not decide to attend person on the day or half the day, you will still recieve a link to the live online streaming, irrespective but are encouraged to attend in person if you have registered for that ticket, as this helps with allows room allocation, respectively for fellow participants].

EARLY BIRD DEADLINE ENDs MONDAY 1ST DECEMBER 2025 after which spaces become limited and prices increase - REGISTER ONLINE and you will receive final instructions.

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Once you have done this, we will send you the bank details to make transfer to.

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Islamic Courses present:

BOOK LAUNCH COURSE: RADICAL SEPARATION OF POWERS: A HISTORY OF ISLAMIC CONSTITUTIONALISM

With author: Professor Wael Hallaq [Columbia University, USA]

Hosts/chairs include:

*Dr. Yakoob Ahmed [Istanbul University’s Ilahiyat (Theology) and Founder of Al Qasas]

*Paul Williams [Blogging Theology Academy]

*Dr Engy Moussa [Cambridge University]

Two centuries of Orientalist scholarship have denied that Islam has a constitutional concept. Premodern Islamic political practice has been subject to mistranslation, misinterpretation and condescension through the eyes of colonisers, and judged inferior to the norms of Western liberalism. Professor Wael Hallaq, a leading scholar of Islamic law, sets the record straight in this groundbreaking volume. Traumatised by the tyranny of absolute monarchies, Europe came to see in Islam everything that it despised about itself. By seeking to understand Islamic governance from within its own tradition of reason, Hallaq reveals premodern Islam to have a rich and distinctive constitutional tradition: starting from the individual as a political subject up to the power of executives.

Date: Saturday 17th January 2026

Time: 9am - 5pm

Location: London - Birbeck College, University of London

In this intensive one day course, we will cover the following chapters of the book with reflections, critique and open Q and sessions:

• Governance: Progress, History, and Ethical Foundations and constitutionalism
• Governance: The Supremacy of the Legal and the Rise of Radical Separation
• Islam’s Definition of Political Freedom and constitutionalism
• Collapse of the Liberal Model: Modern Crisis and the Lessons of History and future model of constitutionalism

Copies of the book will be available for purchase [Published by Oneworld Publications]

About the main presenter: *Professor Wael Hallaq [Columbia University, USA] is the leading authority on Islamic Law in Western academia, Professor Wael B. Hallaq is the Avalon Foundation Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University, where he has been teaching ethics, law, and political thought since 2009. He joined McGill University as an assistant professor in Islamic law in 1985, after receiving his Ph.D. from the University of Washington in 1983. He became a full professor in 1994, and was named a James McGill Professor in Islamic law in 2005. He is the author of over eighty scholarly articles and numerous books, including most recently Restating Orientalism: A Critique of Modern Knowledge (2018) and Reforming Modernity: Ethics and the New Human in the Philosophy of Abdurrahman Taha (2019). Among other books, he has also published Authority, Continuity, and Change in Islamic Law (2001), The Origins and Evolution of Islamic Law (2005), Shari`a: Theory, Practice, Transformations (2009), and An Introduction to Islamic Law (2009). Professor Hallaq’s work is widely debated and translated. In 2015, his Impossible State (2013) won Columbia’s distinguished Book Award for the two years prior, and since it appeared in Arabic in 2014, it has commanded much attention in academic circles and mass media in the Muslim world. In 2007, he won the Islamic Republic of Iran’s best book prize for his Origins and Evolution, and in 2020, the Nautilus Book Award for Reforming Modernity. In 2021, he was also awarded the TÜBA Prize, given by the Turkish Academy of Science. Nearly all his major articles and books have now been rendered into Arabic and Turkish, and many translated into several other languages including Indonesian, Hebrew, Japanese, Persian, Urdu, Italian, German, and most recently Albanian and Russian.

About the hosts/chairs:

*Dr. Yakoob Ahmed [Istanbul University’s Ilahiyat (Theology) and Founder of Al Qasas] is currently an Assistant Professor at Istanbul University’s Ilahiyat (Theology) department as well as a researcher at the Institute of Islamic Studies (ISAMER) at Istanbul University. He holds a Ph.D. from the Department of Languages and Cultures, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) - University of London. He also graduated from the same institution with a Master’s degree in Near and Middle East Studies, focusing on Ottoman history and Turkish politics. His research focuses are Late Ottoman History, Muslim intellectual thought in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Islamic constitutionalism, nation-state construction, ulema history of the Late Ottoman state, identity, and collective memory construction. Dr. Ahmed is also a regular contributor for Middle East Eye and TRT World where he has written about several subjects and founder of the Al Qasas platform.

*Paul Williams [Blogging Theology Academy - www.bloggingtheologyacademy.com ] is host of the Blogging Theology channel, one of the world's most popular YouTube channels discussing comparative religion by introducing some academic and scholarly content to the subject matter, especially concerning the Abrahamic faiths Judaism, Christianity and Islam. He is a blogger and bibliophile based in London and the South of France.

*Dr Engy Moussa is a supervisor of Politics at Cambridge University and was a research fellow at Cambridge Muslim College. She is also James Buchanan Fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University and a Bye-Fellow at Hughes Hall College at the University of Cambridge. She received her PhD in Politics and International Studies from the University of Cambridge, and earned the Alimiyyah Degree in Arabic and Islamic Studies. She is also a graduate of the Diploma in Contextual Islamic Studies and Leadership from Cambridge Muslim College. Her research interests include Islamic governance and politics, social and political movements, authoritarian rule, and critical security studies. She was a senior teaching associate at the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Cambridge.

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AUDIENCE: Because of the academic and theological nature of the subject, it is aimed at Imams, duaat, students of Islamic Sciences, Islamic Studies post graduates, academics, policy makers, think-tank agencies, senior community Muslim thinkers, political thinkers as well as from the general public who are interested in at a nuanced and advanced level of discourse of the subject matter at hand.

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All welcome, limited spaces, pre-registration required!

DEADLINE FOR BOOKINGS APPLY after which prices increase

For more information call/tel: 07956735301 or email: [email protected]

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* Please note, time and resources have been set aside to ensure the programme runs in a smooth and professional manner for the maximum benefit of participants and thus unless the programme has been postponed or cancelled, there are NO REFUNDS as part of the terms and condition policy.

*Lunch and refreshments can be purchased at cafe's or restaurant's near to the venue and NOT included in ticket price.

*The course is BOTH in person ONSITE in London and for those who can not attend in person can purchase the LIVE ONLINE STREAMING ticket to watch it from their device and those coming in person, should decide not to attend person on the day or half the day, you will still recieve a link to the live online streaming, irrespective but are encouraged to attend in person if you have registered for that ticket, as this helps with allows room allocation, respectively for fellow participants

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