Our Academic Organization’s 51st Conference in 2022

51st Annual Conference 2022

CALL FOR PAPERS

51st Annual Conference of the
North American Association of Islamic and
Muslim Studies (NAAIMS)

“Lives of Hadith”

Thursday, October 20, 2022

Cosponsored by:
Languages, Literatures and Cultures
University of Florida, Gainesville, FL

A Vitual Conference on the Zoom platform
All Sessions held in Eastern Standard Time (UTC-05:00)

Deadlines:
Abstracts: May 9, 2022
Final Papers: September 30, 2022

Hadith, stories recounting the life of the Prophet Muhammad and the earliest Muslim community, play an integral role in all the Islamic intellectual disciplines (alulūm al-islāmiyya)), from history to law to Qur?anic exegesis. They also serve as the foundation of both faith-based and academic narratives of Islamic history. Moreover, they are seen by the vast majority of Muslims as the repository of the Prophetic Sunna or the precedent setting practices of the Prophet, things that Muhammad said, did, or of which he tacitly approved. The Sunna is recognized as the second source of religious law and guidance by the majority of Muslims. 

Hadith are so closely linked to the Sunna that many people use the two terms synonymously. As the repository of the Sunna, more details of Islamic law come from the Hadith than from the Qur'an. The reception and use of Hadith is as varied as the people by whom and the purposes for which they are used. Because of the longstanding importance of Hadith and the various ways in which they have been and are being used, this conference invites papers that deal with an equal broad variety of issues related to the Hadith, their history, and usage. 

We invite a diverse range of papers from professors and advanced Ph.D. candidates in the humanities and social sciences. Questions the papers might address include, but are not limited to the following:

  • Aesthetic and Literary Dimensions of Hadith
  • The Identity and Importance of Hadith Transmitters
  • The Processes of Hadith Transmission
  • Digitization and Hadith
  • The Social Use of Hadiths
  • Hadith and the Natural and Social Sciences
  • Hadith in History, Law and Exegesis
  • The Impact of Hadith on Specific Topics (Gender, Environmental Issues, Animal Ethics, etc.)

Abstracts (250 words) Due May 9, 2022

Abstracts from Professors and Advanced Ph.D. Candidates ONLY

  • Abstracts will be evaluated according to following criteria: clear data & methodology used, and relevance and contribution to conference theme. Abstracts must include a title; author’s full name; contact information; and university position (Professor or Ph.D. Candidate)
  • Final papers must be submitted by September 30, 2022
  • Send abstracts & final papers to Layla Sein, NAAIMS Executive Director, and Conference Coordinator at conferences@naaims.org

Program Chair: Professor Sarra Tlili
University of Florida, Gainesville, FL

North American Association of Islamic and Muslim studies.

Conference Program

The North American Association of Islamic
and Muslim Studies (NAAIMS)
[Formerly the Association of Muslim Social
Scientists of North America (AMSS)]

Presents
NAAIMS 51st Annual Conference

“Lives of Hadith”
Thursday, October 20, 2022

Cosponsored By:

Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures
University of Florida, Gainesville, FL

A Vitual Conference on Zoom platform
All Sessions held in Eastern Standard Time (UTC-05:00)

10:00 – 10:15 a.m.      Welcoming Remarks by NAAIMS President
Sarra Tlili, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL
(Program Chair)

10:15 - 11:45 a.m.                   Panel Session 1
Hadith in Contemporary Islamic Thought
Chair/Discussant: Omer Awass, American Islamic College, Chicago, IL

  • Joel Blecher (George Washington University, Washington, DC): “Reflecting on Hadith Commentary: Continuity and Change” 
  • Emad Hamdeh (Embry Riddle University, Daytona Beach, Florida): “Are adīth the Problem? adīth, Reform, and Modernity” 
  • Nadir Ansari (University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada): “The Role of Ḥadīth in the Specification of the Ambiguous (ta yīn al-mubham) in the Qur’an: An Analysis of the Qur’an Exegesis of Aḥmad al-Dīn Amritsari (d. 1936, India)”

11:45 a.m. - 1:15 p.m.                Panel Session 2
Transmission and Transmitters
Chair/Discussant: Mairaj U. Syed, University of California-Davis, CA

  • Mohamad Anas Sarmini (University of Istanbul 29 of May, Istanbul, Turkey): “A Study in the Network Transmission of Hadith: Analysis of Studies that Dealt with Individual Narrations of Abu Hurairah as a Model”
  • Syeda Beena Butool (Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL):
    “Transmitters as Storytellers: Authorship in an Eighth Century Hadith Collection”
  • Heba Arafa Abdelfattah (Grinnell College, Grinnell, Iowa): “Does Hadith Prohibit Figural Representation (Taswir)?”

1:15 – 2:45 p.m.              Lunch Break
        2:45 – 3:45 p.m.              Keynote Address
Keynote Speaker: Asma Sayeed
Program Director of Islamic Studies
University of California, Los Angeles, CA
“Women and Hadith Transmission: Retrospective and Future Directions”

3:45 – 5:15 p.m.                      Panel Session 3
Hadith, Religious Identity and Ethos
Chair/Discussant: Jawad A. Qureshi, Zaytuna College, Berkeley, CA

  • Aisha Y. Musa (Independent Scholar – Qur’anic and Islamic Studies, Tigard, OR): “And Muhammad is His Messenger: The Role of Sunna and Hadith in the Formation of Islamic Identity”
  • M. A. Mujeeb Khan (University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT): “Making Prophetic Therapy: Defeating the Competition with its Own Theories”
  • Erin Atwell (University of Chicago, Chicago, IL): “Textual Inheritances of Taqwa in the Citations of Contemporary Egyptian Preacher Training Manuals”

5:15 - 6:45 p.m.                       Panel Session 4
Socio-political Uses and Invocations of Hadith
Chair/Discussant: Kamran Scot Aghaie, University of Texas, Austin, TX

  • Han Hsien Liew (Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ): “The Caliphate will Last for Thirty Years: Political & Historical Debates in the Afterlife of a Prophetic Hadith”
  • Masoud Shavarani (University of Islamic Denominations, Tehran Iran): “Man is Khalīfat Allāh or Abd Allāh in Hadith
  • Zahra Mohagheghian (Institute for Humanities and Cultural Studies, Tehran, Iran): “The Goddess al-'Uzza, from Idol to a Black Woman: A Feminine Study in the Growth of a Tradition”

6:45 pm.                                   Concluding Remarks
NAAIMS President and Program Chair

 

North American Association of Islamic and Muslim studies.