Call for Papers – Islamic Colloquia of Edinburgh (ICE)

Islamic law has long engaged new realities with conceptual depth and interpretive flexibility. Yet today’s technological transformations raise questions that are increasingly difficult to fit neatly into premodern categories without further refinement. How should jurists think about agency, embodiment, accountability, harm, kinship, ownership, intention, legal capacity, and personhood in light of rapidly changing technological conditions? What happens when older legal distinctions remain useful, and what happens when they begin to strain?

This conference seeks papers that examine such questions through focused case studies. We are not merely interested in broad reflections on Islam and modernity, but in careful analyses of particular technologies, thought experiments, or emerging practices that test the boundaries of existing fiqh. Papers may be doctrinal, legal theoretical, ethical, historical, comparative, or interdisciplinary in approach.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Artificial intelligence and legal reasoning, e.g., whether AI can assist, simulate, or meaningfully participate in fatwa production
• Autonomous systems and moral accountability, including questions of liability, intention, and delegated agency
• Brain computer interfaces and the changing boundaries of personhood, intention, privacy, and bodily integrity
• Human enhancement technologies and whether classical legal categories can accommodate radical cognitive or bodily modification
• Gene editing and reproductive technologies, including questions of lineage, inheritance, disability, parental responsibility, and the alteration of the human form
• Artificial wombs and ectogenesis, especially in relation to motherhood, gestation, custody, kinship, and legal status
• Cryonics, life extension, and the legal implications of suspended or radically prolonged life
• Digital persons, virtual identities, and avatars, including questions of legal responsibility, marriage, testimony, representation, and deception
• Robotics in care settings, especially where machines mediate intimacy, dependency, elder care, disability support, or ritual practice
• Virtual and augmented reality, including the jurisprudence of simulated environments, digital embodiment, and mediated religious presence
• Neuroscience and the law, particularly where new understandings of cognition, compulsion, or diminished control reshape ideas of moral and legal accountability
• Space travel and off world habitation, including prayer times, fasting, qibla determination, ritual purity, and political jurisdiction beyond Earth
• Bioengineering, synthetic biology, and the production of novel organisms or hybrid biological systems

• Only PhD Candidates or PhD holders will be considered
• Sign-ups for the conference can be completed through the submission form
• Submissions via direct emails will not be accepted
• Abstracts should be no more than 300 words
• Please ensure that your abstract clearly identifies the technological case study, legal problem, and wider jurisprudential significance of your paper
• Submission Deadline: Friday, March 26, 2027
• Decisions will be communicated in early April 2027

The conference will be held online during the first week of July 2027, with exact dates to be confirmed.

Selected papers will be considered for publication following the conference. Please note that acceptance to present does not guarantee publication.

For questions or further information, please contact Dr Shoaib Ahmed Malik at shoaib.malik@ed.ac.uk 

We look forward to your contributions as we explore how Islamic jurisprudence may respond to technological futures that are already beginning to reshape human life, moral experience, and legal reasoning.