An online publication of the AbuSulayman Center for Global Islamic Studies at George Mason University

Mauritania

The Modernist Roots of Islamic Autocracy: Shaykh Abdullah Bin Bayyah and the UAE-Israel Peace Deal

By David H. Warren // August 27, 2020August 28, 2020

Shaykh Abdullah Bin Bayyah’s justification for Islamic autocracy is far from a throwback to an imagined premodern world of Muslim scholars united with pious sultans, but rather, deeply indebted to the reformist idioms of Islamic…

A Mauritanian Fatwa against the French-Led Military Intervention in Mali

By Alexander Thurston // January 13, 2017January 13, 2017

In January 2013, France launched Operation Serval, a military intervention designed to restore the territorial integrity of Mali. The operation was meant to dislodge a coalition of jihadist groups that had ruled northern Mali for…