Minaret

A Sociology of Post-Imperial Islamic Legal Cultures: Insights from Central Asia, the Middle East, North Africa, and Southeast Asia

MINARET  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.

Scientific coordinator

Rustamjon Urinboyev
Principal Investigator and Coordinator of the MINARET project
Department of Sociology of Law, Lund University

Sciences Po team and doctoral project

Bayram Balci, Sciences Po – CERI

Sciences Po will host one of the doctoral researchers within the MINARET Doctoral Network:

DC13 – Legal Trust and Constitutional Legitimacy

Host: Sciences Po (France)

Focus: The relationship between legal trust, legitimacy, and constitutional authority.

Description: This doctoral project examines how citizens in Morocco, Tunisia, and Kazakhstan perceive law, justice, and public institutions. The doctoral candidate will investigate how trust in legal institutions influences constitutional legitimacy, governance outcomes, and state-society relations. The project seeks to develop new insights into the social foundations of constitutional authority and democratic governance.

Project partners

MINARET is an international consortium coordinated by Lund University and involving European beneficiary institutions as well as a wider network of associated partners in Europe, Central Asia, the Middle East, North Africa, Southeast Asia and beyond.

The complete lists are available here:  Beneficiaries  -  Associated Partners

Programme of seminars, conferences and other activities

MINARET combines doctoral research with an international training programme consisting of doctoral training schools, thematic workshops, seminars, conferences, fieldwork, secondments, dissemination activities and policy-oriented events organised across the consortium.

Sciences Po will contribute to these broader research and training activities and will host DC13 – Legal Trust and Constitutional Legitimacy, a comparative doctoral research project focusing on Morocco, Tunisia and Kazakhstan.

The detailed programme of seminars, workshops, conferences and doctoral training activities will be published and updated as the project progresses.

Networks and project websites

• MINARET project  website
   
• European Commission / CORDIS project page
   
• Lund University presentation of MINARET

Outputs

As MINARET starts on 1 February 2027, project-specific academic publications and other research outputs will be produced during the implementation of the project.

Planned outputs include peer-reviewed publications, doctoral research outputs, policy briefs and policy papers, international conferences and workshops, and other dissemination activities aimed at academic and non-academic audiences.

Outputs will be progressively made available through the MINARET project website and the websites of participating institutions.