Dr. Sheibani’s current research focuses on the philosophy of Islamic law, its history and practice, Islamic family law, ethics, and Sufism.

As the field of Islamic law continues to grow, new methodologies, subfields and sustained scholarly engagement continue to expand. Co-edited with Dr. Sohaira Siddiqui, the objective of this Companion is to capture the multifaceted growth of the field and signal future directions it can take. 

The Companion will focus on the development of four areas in Islamic law: 1) the developing discourse of Islamic legal history, 2) the rise of socio-legal studies, 3) the study of the political and Islamic law, and finally, 4) the rise of new methodologies. Each chapter will aim to provide a critical examination of contemporary academic discourses while also providing a unique contribution to these debates and suggesting future avenues for research.

A co-authored study with Dr. Mairaj Syed exploring the role of temporary marriage (mutʿa) in the development of sectarian identities and the intersection of law and morality in early Islamic law. Through digital humanities techniques, we construct a corpus from hundreds of hadiths to examine the debate over mutʿa’s legitimacy.

Analyzing the hadiths; geographic spread and the sectarian affiliations of their transmitters, we highlight mutʿa’s influence on sectarian identity formation and the jurisprudential tensions between law and morality in early Islam. This research showcases the value of digital humanities in historical Islamic law and hadith analysis.

This research paper explores the diverse models of womanhood presented in the Quran and in the Prophetic community. It examines the lives of the exemplary models of womanhood that God elevates, highlighting the shared foundational attributes of womanhood emphasized in their story, alongside their very diverse life trajectories. It also explores the biographies of the mother’s of the believers, underscoring their divergent interpretations of their public roles after the death of the Prophet Muhammad. Centering the diverse range of exemplary archetypes of womanhood and their life trajectories can serve as a corrective to the totalizing discourse of a single mode of ‘the ideal Muslim woman’.

This research paper is commissioned by al-Mujadilah as part of a research working group.