Studying Female Islamic Authority: From Top-Down to Bottom-Up Modes of Certification

This article introduces a special issue on female Islamic authority in contemporary Asia. It provides an overview of the literature on religious authority in Islam and briefly lays out which modes of female religious authority have been more accepted than others in the schools of jurisprudence. Based on the articles included in this issue, the introduction makes two chief observations. First, in contrast to the overwhelming consensus among experts of Islamic law that women may serve as muftūn (plural of muftī), in most Muslim-majority societies today women are either seldom found in this role, or where there are muftīyāt (female muftūn), their role is confined to women’s issues. Second, while a growing body of academic studies has drawn attention to the recent phenomenon of state-instituted or -supported programs that train women in Islamic authority, little attention has been paid to the question of how communities react to such programs. The special issue is a call to study female religious authority from the bottom up, in order to better understand why believers, whether men or women, ascribe religious authority to women in some contexts and situations, but overwhelmingly still prefer male religious authority over female, despite the permissiveness for female juristic expertise in Islamic law.</p

A meta-analysis of the effects of galling insects on host plant secondary metabolites

The idea that galling insects actively manipulate host plant chemistry has been previously documented but has not been quantified across a range of galler and host plant taxa. We present the first quantitative review of the relationship between insect galling and levels of secondary metabolites in host plants. Using meta-analytic techniques, we examined this relationship across 40 galler and host plant species combinations. We found that galling insects are associated with significantly higher levels of tannins and phenolics; however, no difference was found for volatiles. Hymenoptera, Diptera and Hemiptera were associated with higher levels of secondary metabolites; however, only Hymenoptera was significant. The climatic zone of the study area did not explain significant differences in gall-induced secondary metabolites. Overall the results show that the ability of galling insects to manipulate host plant secondary chemistry is widespread across insect and plant taxa. The evolutionary success of galling insects may be in part due to this unique ability