Dear Colleagues,

During the upheaval of the prematurely entitled “Arab Spring”, the abolition of old constitutions and the creation of new ones featured prominently. Discussions of constitutions in the Middle East and broader Islamic world have tended to focus on the extent to which constitutions advance democracy, the balance of powers, and human rights (Bernard-Maugiron, 2013; Nathan J. Brown, 2002; Mustafa Kamel Al-Sayyid, 2013). Other work on Islam and constitutions has investigated the concept of Islamic constitutionalism in Islamic political theory, in terms of Islamic understandings of human rights, equality, and the separation of powers (Rutherford, 2008; Longo, 2019; March, 2019). Yet other scholarship has addressed the role constitutions have played in revolutions and in legitimizing new regimes (Sultany, 2017).

While questions of democracy, human rights, and political legitimacy are important, this Special Issue of Religions calls for a closer examination of the ways in which constitutions manage the relationship between religion and politics (Agrama, 2012), with a particular focus on how religion is altered in the process of its management. Constitution debating, constitution writing, and laws and public attitudes informed by constitutional articles show how the state manages the relationship between religion and politics and how “legal institutions play important roles in constituting struggle over religion” (Moustafa, 2018, 2). Constitutions represent moments when the state manages and defines who is the minority (Mahmood, 2012), who is the majority (Iqtidar, 2012), and what the relationship between the two is. Constitutions function to craft national culture and fashion citizenship in the service of the state. Hanna Lerner contends that such a “foundational aspect of the constitution has been generally neglected by studies in comparative politics” (Lerner, 2011, 4).

Of particular interest to this Special Issue are papers that seek to grapple with the questions outlined above in Muslim-majority countries across the globe, while highlighting the specific legal, social, and political consequences of how religion is altered by the state’s management of it through constitutional articles. Topics may include, but are not limited to:

• how Islam is managed, defined, and interpreted when Muslim-majority states make constitutional statements about it;
• how constitutional articles concerning the sharia have set the terms by which it is interpreted;
• how constitutions determine who gets to speak for the sharia;
• how constitutional statements about Islam and the sharia work in conjunction with statements about, for example, minorities, women, free speech, and economics; and
• how constitutional commitments to Islam and the sharia fashion citizenship and craft national culture.

Dr. Rachel M. Scott
Guest Editor

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• constitutions
• religion and law
• religion and politics
• Islam
• sharia