The Development of Constitutional Consciousness in Muslim Legal Theory

Professor Abdullah Saeed currently holds the Oman Chair of Arab and Islamic Studies and is also the Director of the National Centre for Contemporary Islamic Studies at Melbourne University. He has published extensively across a range of topics dealing with the Qur’an(also Koran. Arabic term meaning, ‘recitation’ or ‘scripture’): Muslims believe that the Holy Qur’an contains divine revelations to the Prophet Muhammed received in Mecca and Medina over a period of… More, international human rights, law and ethics, and Muslim communities in Australia. A strong advocate of reform of Islamic thought and provider of training courses on Islamic issues to community leaders and government agencies in Australia and overseas, Professor Saeed is also a vigorous proponent of interfaith understanding. In recognition of his outstanding contribution to academia, Professor Saeed was appointed a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities in 2010. In 2013 he was awarded the Medal of Australia (OAM) by the Government of Australia for ‘service worthy of particular recognition’.

Mohamed M. Keshavjee is a South African born-lawyer called to the Bar at Gray’s Inn in 1969. He completed his LLM at London University and his PhD at SOAS with a focus on Islamic Law and Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR). He has practised law in Kenya, Canada and the United Kingdom.

His first book, Islam, Sharia and Alternative Dispute Resolution deals with how Muslims engage with sharia, customary practices and the laws of the United Kingdom. He has spoken on ADR at conferences in Europe, North America and Asia, and has trained family mediators in the EU countries and imams and pastors in mosque and church conflicts in the UK and the USA, respectively.

In 2016, he was awarded the Gandhi, King, Ikeda Peace Award by the Martin Luther King Jr. International Chapel at Morehouse College, Atlanta, Georgia, for his work on peace and human rights education.​

Hadi Enayat is a political sociologist specialising in the Middle East with a particular focus on religion, law, political theology and intellectual history. He is the author of Law, State and Society in Modern Iran (Palgrave Macmillan 2013 – winner of the Biennial Mossadegh Prize 2013), Islam and Secularism in Post-Colonial Thought: A Cartography of Asadian Genealogies (Palgrave Macmillan 2017 translated into Persian by Abbas Jong and published by Nashr-e Sales publishers, Tehran 2023), The Rule of Law in the Islamic Republic of Iran: Power, Institutions and the Limits of Reform (co-edited with Mirjam Kuenkler, forthcoming 2024 Cambridge University Press) and Rethinking Sharia: Critical Debates in Historical Context (with Mohamed Keshavjee, forthcoming 2025 Bloomsbury).

Dr Salim Kassim-Lakha is an Honorary Senior Fellow in the School of Social and Political Sciences at The University of Melbourne. He is a specialist in Development Studies with a particular focus on South Asia. His scholarly publications cover topics such as economic liberalisation and the middle class in India, governance and social protection, civil society, and transnational migration.