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 paper critically examines contemporary Islamic discourses that promote a singular, essentialized model of pious womanhood rooted in domesticity, marriage, and static social roles. By analyzing the biographies of the Prophet Muḥammad’s wives—the Mothers of the Believers (ummahāt al-muʾminīn)—the author argues that early Islamic history presents a dynamic spectrum of feminine piety rather than a homogenous ideal. Sharing a common foundation of devotion and Prophetic tarbiya, the co-wives nonetheless cultivated distinct devotional modalities, ranging from asceticism and fasting to public scholarship and community stewardship. Furthermore, their post-Prophetic lives demonstrate divergent interpretations of the Quranic ḥijāb mandate, spanning Sawda’s strict domestic seclusion to ʿĀʾisha’s and Umm Salama’s active political and legal engagement. By situating these differences within a shared cultural milieu, the study demonstrates that diversity in female life trajectories is an intentional feature of the Sunna. Ultimately, the paper calls for relinquishing reductive gender binaries and essentialized definitions of fiṭra, urging modern Muslim communities to honor varied female choices and modalities of public and private engagement. 

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