Felicitas Opwis

Prof. Felicitas Opwis is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies. Her scholarship examines the religious sciences of Islam and the historical, social, and political contexts in which Islamic thought is articulated. Her primary research field is Islamic jurisprudence, with a particular focus on how the formulation of Islamic legal theory relates to broader intellectual discourse and to its surrounding political and social environment.

Her work investigates how Islamic jurisprudents address the enduring challenge of enabling legal change while upholding the scriptural foundations of the law. Through close comparative analyses, she studies how and why legal principles—such as public interest and juristic preference—shift over time. Prof. Opwis has published books and articles on the development of the concept of maslaha and the purposes of the law (maqāṣid al-sharīʿa) in both the pre-modern and contemporary periods. Her research also explores the construction of authority within legal schools, reinterpretations of specific legal principles, debates about whether a “reformation” has occurred in Islamic law, and how contemporary approaches to Islamic law influence the nature of legal theory.

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