“Islam and the Need for a New Epistemology in 21st Century.”
Third FOCUS Conference, Palembang, 23-24 April, 2010

The Third Forum Cendiakawan Umat Serantau (FOCUS) Conference was held at IAIN Raden Fatah, Palembang from 23 to 24 April, 2010. More than 50 scholars from Indonesia and Malaysia participated in the two days conference representing various academic institutions such as UIAN, IAIN and STAIN.

FOCUS was founded in 2006 as one of the intellectual and scholarly activities initiated by the IIITM (International Institute of Islamic Thought, Malaysia). Its main goal is to provide a healthy forum for Muslim academics and scholars especially from the Southeast Asian region to discourse on important issues pertaining to Islam and the Muslims and intellectual challenges confronting the contemporary Muslim ummah. The first FOCUS conference was held in December 2006 at Cherating, Kuantan, Pahang. FOCUS 2 was held in Kuala Lumpur on 23-25 January 2008.

The International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT) is pleased to announce its Summer Students Program for 2010, which will run for six weeks between Monday, June 28 and Friday, August 6, 2010. The program is designed for senior undergraduate and graduate students who are majoring in the humanities or social science disciplines and who have a particular interest in developing their knowledge and research skills in the core areas of Islamic studies such as Quran, Hadith, Fiqh or Islamic jurisprudence, Islamic History and Civilization, contemporary Islamic thought, Muslim world affairs and acquiring training in subjects ranging from Islamic finance to faith based entrepreneurship and research methods for Islamic studies.
 
During the course of the program, students would complete a total of 200 hours of directed research, instruction and administrative work at IIIT and would receive a certificate of completion from IIIT. Top performing students may qualify for a one year, non-resident research fellowship program at IIIT.
 
Please click here for more information and online registration.

Muslims, similar to other people, cannot escape the process of modernization and the growing integration and interconnectedness of people and societies around the world. This process can influence people in one of two ways; either, as argued by Fukuyama leading to “… an increasing homogenization of all human societies, regardless of their historical origins or cultural inheritances” (Fukuyama, 1992, p. xiv), or people may become even more aware of their differences as seen in the revival of traditional values and/or a rediscovery of indigenous cultures and religion.

The last decade has witnessed a mushrooming of Islamic movements that view themselves as counterforces to cultural domination by the West. While the goal of these groups is to assert their religious identity in the face of what they regard as imperializing ideas like modernization and secularism, many have also turned to radicalism, especially in circumstances where moderate ways of responding are perceived to be ineffective in producing results.

Many Muslim societies are presently caught at such a crossroad between the traditional and the modern, where the old institutions and values are increasingly being brought in contact with modern forces. But, how they have dealt or are dealing with this situation depends on many factors.

This special issue of Intellectual Discourse aims to publish papers that will examine how Muslims and Muslim countries cope with changes brought about by modernity to be in line with traditions. The following are some subthemes that can be used as guides:

·         Tradition and modernity from the Islamic perspective
·         Islam and secularization
·         Islamizing modernity or modernizing Islam?
·         Responses of Islamic movements to modernity
·         Effects of modernity on people’s well-being
·         Persistence of tradition in the face of modernity
·         Modernity and the crisis of identity
·         State and religion in the age of modernity

The guest editor for this special issue is Professor Abdul Rashid Moten. Manuscript submission should be made via email to him at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . For guidelines to author instructions, please see http://iiu.edu.my/intdiscourse/index.php/islam/about/submissions.

Deadline for submission: 31st December 2010 - Expected Publication June, 2011

The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences (AJISS), a double-blind peer-reviewed journal, is seeking contributions for its Special Issue on Islamic Ethics, to be published in July 2010.

Prospective authors are invited to submit papers on the following themes:

1. THEME 1: The historical relationship between Islamic jurisprudence or law (usul al-fiqh) and Islamic ethics (ilm al-akhlaq) in all schools of Islamic thought and the resulting implications for the 21st century, especially as regards our understanding and development of contemporary individual or international morality and the relation of ethics and culture;

2. THEME 2: Problems of applied Islamic ethics pertinent (but not limited) to ethics in international affairs (e.g., human rights and global justice); ethical problems of just war, global jihad, and the “war on terror”; research ethics related to science, engineering, and technology; biomedical ethics (e.g., stem cell science and other controversial issues); environmental ethics (e.g., climate change and sustainable energy futures); social responsibility, sustainable economic development, and business ethics; education policy and the moral dimensions of curriculum development and pedagogy at all levels; and moral dilemmas in psychological practice... more