For decades, debates on Islam have centred on a narrow set of questions: compatibility with Western liberalism, confrontation with modernity, or confinement to the status of a cultural or spiritual tradition. These frames are now analytically exhausted. They presume the West as the primary site of rationality and progress, leaving Islamic thought positioned largely in reactive or derivative terms.
At the same time, Western modernity itself faces profound strain. Enlightenment norms are unsettled by an epistemic crisis of truth and authority, the erosion of universalist human rights claims, social fragmentation around gender and identity, and deepening economic inequality and moral uncertainty in finance.
Against this conjuncture, a central analytical question arises: can Islamic thought function as a generative resource for reimagining global values, not simply as critique, but as a source of norm formation, ethical reasoning, and institutional imagination? This project approaches Islamic traditions not as objects of comparison with the West, but as active sites of intellectual and political production that engage directly with the fractures of contemporary modernity. Developments across Muslim-majority societies, particularly in the Gulf, underscore the timeliness of this inquiry. Wealth, knowledge production, cultural influence, and technological capacity are no longer Western monopolies. These contexts increasingly shape, rather than merely receive, post-liberal futures and global value regimes.
In order to address this question, the Ibn Khaldoun Centre for Humanities and Social Sciences at Qatar University and the Centre for Islamic and West Asian Studies (CIWAS) at Royal Holloway, University of London, have jointly developed this project as a focused research initiative. They invite papers from scholars, researchers, and practitioners whose work offers analytically grounded, theoretically informed, and empirically rigorous engagement with how Islamic intellectual, legal, ethical, and institutional traditions address questions of authority, knowledge, justice, and the public good in the context of global modernity. Contributions should advance a clear argument and situate their intervention within relevant scholarly debates.
Indicative themes include, but are not limited to:
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Truth, Knowledge, and Science in Crisis
- What can Islamic epistemologies contribute to debates on truth, authority, and knowledge in an age of misinformation and AI-generated content?
- How do Muslim societies conceptualise scientific knowledge, reason, and expertise?
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Human Rights and the Future of Dignity
- Can Islamic intellectual traditions offer alternative foundations for liberty, dignity, and rights?
- How do Islamic actors engage with refugee protection, medical law, and global bioethics?
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Populism, Mass Power, and Political Ethics
- Can Islamic political ethics contain or reform populist excess and politicised mass mobilisation?
- What institutional or intellectual responses have emerged within Muslim contexts?
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Economic Ethics, Finance, and Entrepreneurship
- How do Islamic finance models address riba, inequality, and credit justice?
- Have these models fostered cultures of ethical entrepreneurship and productivity?
- Can Islamic economic thought inform global debates on sustainability and moral economy?
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Philanthropy, Welfare, and the Public Good
- How are waqf and zakat being reimagined in response to contemporary welfare challenges?
- Can Islamic fiscal ethics support community-driven approaches to inequality and poverty?
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Gender, Inclusivity, and Educational Reform
- How do Muslim educational institutions negotiate pluralism, gender, and authority?
- What resources does Islamic pedagogy offer for debates on diversity and curriculum?
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Muslim Women Cultural Production
- How do Muslim women shape global culture through literature, speculative fiction, animation, and digital media?
- Can Muslim Women voices contribute new paradigms to global Women thought?
How to participate
- Please complete the
participation form electronically and submit an abstract of 300–500 words, together with a short biography of up to 150 words and contact details, by 1 May 2026.
- Abstracts should be submitted via email to: IbnKhaldon-conf@qu.edu.qa
A selection of successful papers will be invited to a closed academic workshop at Qatar University in Doha, followed by a public symposium in London. Final papers will be considered for inclusion in an edited academic volume arising from the project.
Important dates
- Abstract submission deadline: 1 May 2026
- Notification of acceptance: 31 May 2026
- Full paper submission: 30 September 2026
- Announcement of accepted papers: 30 October 2026
- Doha Workshop: 2–3 December 2026
- London Symposium: 3 February 2027