Centre for the Islamic and West Asian Studies is joining forces with the Ibn Khaldoun Centre for Humanities and Social Sciences at Qatar University on a major new collaborative initiative, and we are inviting scholars and practitioners to be part of it.
For too long, debates about Islam in the academy have been framed by a narrow set of questions: compatibility with Western liberalism, confrontation with modernity, or reduction to cultural heritage. These frameworks do a disservice to the depth and vitality of Islamic intellectual traditions, and they are becoming increasingly inadequate as Western modernity itself faces mounting pressures: crises of truth and authority, the erosion of consensus around human rights, social fragmentation, and widening economic inequality.
This initiative reframes the question. Rather than asking how Islamic thought responds to Western frameworks, we ask what Islamic intellectual, legal, ethical, and institutional traditions can actively contribute to the reimagining of global values, as sources of norm formation, ethical reasoning, and institutional vision.
We welcome analytically grounded contributions from across disciplines, engaging themes including truth, knowledge, and science in crisis; human rights and the future of dignity; populism and political ethics; economic ethics and entrepreneurship; philanthropy and the public good; gender, inclusivity, and educational reform; and Muslim women and cultural production.
Selected authors will be invited to present at a closed academic workshop at Qatar University in Doha, followed by a public symposium in London. Outstanding papers will be considered for an edited academic volume arising from the project.
Submission deadline: 1 May 2026.
Full details, including submission guidelines, are available at https://www.qu.edu.qa/en-us/research/ibnkhaldon/events/islam-and-the-future-of-global-values
To download the workshop flyer, please visit: https://www.ciwas.net/blog