About MINARET

MINARET: A Sociology of Post-Imperial Islamic Legal Cultures: Insights from Central Asia, the Middle East, North Africa, and Southeast Asia is an international research and doctoral training project that examines the relationship between law, religion, and governance in Muslim-majority societies shaped by imperial and post-imperial histories.

The project explores how Islamic values, legal cultures, constitutional traditions, and governance practices interact in contemporary societies. It pays particular attention to how these interactions influence public trust, state legitimacy, legal reform, constitutional change, and debates around democracy and good governance.

MINARET brings together interdisciplinary expertise from sociology of law, legal studies, Islamic studies, governance studies, political science, anthropology, history, and decolonial approaches. Through comparative research across Central Asia, the Middle East, North Africa, and Southeast Asia, the project seeks to generate new empirical and theoretical insights into how legal and religious traditions shape contemporary governance.

At the centre of MINARET is a doctoral training programme designed to support a new generation of scholars working on post-imperial Islamic legal cultures. The project combines original empirical research with international collaboration, academic training, fieldwork, workshops, conferences, publications, and policy-oriented outputs.

By studying legal and governance trajectories beyond Western-centric models, MINARET aims to contribute to broader debates on democratization, constitutional development, rule of law, and good governance in Muslim-majority societies.