University of Wisconsin Law School Assistant Professor Asifa Quraishi has been named a 2009 Carnegie Scholar by the Carnegie Corporation of New York. Quraishi was selected for her compelling ideas and commitment to enriching the quality of the public dialogue on Islam.

Quraishi was selected as one of 24 well-established and promising young thinkers, analysts, and writers who will receive two-year grants of up to $100,000 from the Carnegie Foundation.  The 2009 awardees are the fifth class to focus on Islam, bringing to 117 the number of Carnegie Scholars devoted to the topic since the program began in 2000. 

A description of Quraishi’s project, titled “Lost in Non-translation: What’s Missing When We Say Shari’a,” appears below.

Commenting on the 2009 Carnegie Scholars and the program's focus on Islam, Carnegie Corporation of New York President Vartan Gregorian said, "We are cultivating a diverse scholarly community spanning a range of disciplines with the expectation that their voices will help Americans develop a more complex understanding of Muslim societies here and throughout the world--revealing Islam's rich diversity. Only through vibrant dialogue, guided by bold and nuanced scholarship, can we move public thinking into new territory."

The Carnegie Scholars program allows independent-minded thinkers to pursue original projects oriented toward catalyzing intellectual discourse as well as guiding more focused and pragmatic policy discussions. Scholars are selected not only for their originality and proven intellectual capacity, but for their demonstrated ability to communicate their ideas in ways that can catalyze public discourse.

Each year, nominations for Carnegie Scholars are invited from more than 500 nominators representing a broad range of disciplines and institutions, including academia, research institutes, nonprofit organizations, the media, and foundations. Nominators are asked to identify original thinkers who have the ability--or promise--to spark academic and public debate, and whose work transcends academic boundaries.

Quraishi’s project,“Lost in Non-translation: What’s Missing When We Say Shari’a,”  aims to explore how a more complex and careful understanding of shari’a may lead to workable compromises between Islamic law and international rights norms, thereby changing the current paradigm of often irreconcilable absolutes. Quraishi argues that the concept has become dangerously politicized in recent years, as questions arise as to how a devotion to Islamic law can exist in harmony with more secular principles of human rights. 

By offering a comprehensive framing for shari’a—one which acknowledges that it is composed of two interdependent realms of law, divine revelation and public good—she seeks to cultivate a workable consensus around this new framing.  Through her publishing and via discussions with scholars and the public in the United States and Muslim audiences around the world, Quraishi aims to alter the global debate about shari’a so that it is more informed and nuanced.

More information on the new scholars and their projects can be found at http://www.carnegie.org/sub/news/2009_scholars.html .

This article appears in the categories: Articles