Walter Edward Young is a Senior Researcher (Islamic Argumentation Theory) in “RevLog Redux”, the 2024 European Research Council (ERC) Synergy Grant project “Logic in Reverse Redux. Illegitimate Argumentative Moves in the Arabic, Byzantine, Hebrew and Latin Medieval Traditions”. Since 2020, Dr. Young has worked closely in developing this project with its founders Leone Gazziero (CNRS) and Shahid Rahman (Université de Lille), along with core associates Roberta Padlina (Université de Genève), Tony Street (University of Cambridge), and Charles Manekin (University of Maryland). Now, with the vital support of Robert Wisnovsky (McGill, Institute of Islamic Studies), who will continue to lend his expertise in an advisory capacity, Dr. Young has brought the project (and thus the ERC) to his alma mater, McGill’s Institute of Islamic Studies. As an official partner institution in RevLog Redux, this will be the first time McGill receives funding for joining an ERC consortium.
In pursuit of a distinct branch of the RevLog Redux research agenda (Arabic Tradition, Transmitted Sciences), Dr. Young, with Prof. Rahman’s Lille-based team, will direct and engage in (1) editing and translating a select corpus of texts on Islamic juristic dialectic (jadal) and disputation protocols (ādāb al-baḥth wa-l-munāẓara); (2) mining that corpus: distilling and cataloging its argumentative moves with a rigorous set of tools and lenses for analysis; (3) identifying distinct Illegitimate Argumentative Moves (IAMs) as theorized by medieval Muslim dialecticians; and (4) tagging and in other ways processing and integrating relevant material into the project’s Semantic-Web-core digital humanities platform, AskSten (which, among many other things, will use that data in linked LLMs and knowledge graphs, empowering Machine Learning and Machine Reasoning to enhance AI). Within the broader RevLog Redux project, findings among the Arabic, Latin, Hebrew, and Byzantine branches will be brought into comparative analysis on a continual basis, and the whole wealth of the medieval traditions thus unearthed will be brought into direct interaction with contemporary argumentation theory. Open-access edition-translations, papers, monographs, and edited volumes are planned to bring texts and findings to the scholarly community and broader public, along with AskSten’s interactive applications (knowledge graphs, encyclopedia of IAMs, argument-analysis tools, etc.)
Dr. Young is a McGill graduate, with both an MA (2006) and PhD (2012) from the Institute of Islamic Studies; he has held a number of research and teaching positions at McGill, as well as research fellowships at Harvard Law School, the University of Oxford, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, and the Universität Bonn. Most recently, he worked with Prof. Wisnovsky’s team on the John Templeton Foundation project “Muḥammad ʿAbduh’s Supercommentary on al-Dawānī’s Commentary on al-Ījī’s Creed: A New Source for the Renewal of Islamic Analytical Theology.” He is the author of The Dialectical Forge (Springer, 2017) and some two dozen published and forthcoming articles and book chapters. He is a core member of a larger movement to research, revive, and practice the Islamic sciences of critical thinking—especially dialectical debate methods (jadal / munāẓara / ādāb al-baḥth). His driving objective remains to bring these methods to light, to analyze them, to make them accessible, and—above all—to train a new cadre of critical thinkers in their practice.
Publications
BOOKS
2017 The Dialectical Forge: Juridical Disputation and the Evolution of Islamic Law. Logic, Argumentation & Reasoning 9. Cham: Springer.
CRITICAL EDITIONS
2019 Digital Edition and Translation: Shams al-Dīn al-Samarqandī, Kitāb ʿAyn al-Naẓar fī ʿIlm al-Jadal. TEI infrastructure by Frederik Elwert. Digital Humanities at the Center for Religious Studies (DH@CERES), Ruhr-Universität Bochum.
JOURNAL ARTICLES AND BOOK CHAPTERS
2024 “The Insufficiency of Concomitance Alone: ‘Co-Presence and Co-Absence’ in the Mukhtaṣar of Ibn al-Ḥājib (d. 646/1249), with Commentary from the Sharḥ of al-Ījī (d. 756/1355) and the Ḥāshiya of al-Taftāzānī (d. 793/1390).” In Islamic Law in Context: A Primary Source Reader, eds. Omar Anchassi and Robert Gleave. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
2023 [with Shahid Rahman] “Outside the Logic of Necessity: Deontic Puzzles and ‘Breaking’ Compound Causal Properties in Islamic Legal Theory and Dialectic.” In Fallacies in the Arabic, Byzantine, Hebrew and Latin Traditions (Ad Argumenta, Quaestio Special Issues 4). Eds. Laurent Cesalli, Leone Gazziero, Charles Manekin, Shahid Rahman, Tony Street, and Michele Trizio. Turnhout: Brepols.
2022 “Molla Fenârî and Pre-Imperial Ottoman Argumentation Theory.” In Osmanlı’da İlm-i Mantık ve Münazara. Eds. Mehmet Özturan, Yusuf Daşdemir, and Furkan Kayacan. Üsküdar, İstanbul: İSAR Yayınları.
2022 “On the Logical Machinery of Post-Classical Dialectic: The Kitāb ʿAyn al-Naẓar of Shams al-Dīn al-Samarqandī (d. 722/1322).” Methodos 22 (2022). Eds. Shahid Rahman and Walter Young.
2022 [with Shahid Rahman] “Argumentation and Arabic Philosophy of Language: Introduction.” Methodos 22 (2022). Eds. Shahid Rahman and Walter Young.
2022 [with Shahid Rahman] “ https://journals.openedition.org/methodos/8838.” Methodos 22 (2022). Eds. Shahid Rahman and Walter Young.
2022 Foreword. In Muhammad Iqbal, Arsyad al-Banjari’s Insights on Parallel Reasoning and Dialectic in Law: The Development of Islamic Argumentation Theory in 18th Century Southeast Asia, pp. vii-x. Logic, Argumentation & Reasoning 25. Cham: Springer.
2022 [with Shahid Rahman and Farid Zidani] “Ibn Ḥazm on Heteronomous Imperatives. A Landmark in the History of the Logical Analysis of Norms.” In Agency, Norms, Inquiry, and Artifacts: Essays in Honor of Risto Hilpinen, pp. 139-171. Eds. P. McNamara, A. Jones, and M. Brown. Cham, Switzerland: Springer (Synthese Library 454, Studies in Epistemology, Logic, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science).
2021 “The Formal Evolution of Islamic Juridical Dialectic: A Brief Glimpse.” In New Developments in Legal Reasoning and Logic: From Ancient Law to Modern Legal Systems, pp. 83-102. Eds. Shahid Rahman, Matthias Armgardt, Hans Christian Nordtveit Kvernenes. Logic, Argumentation & Reasoning 23. Dordrecht; New York; Cham: Springer.
2021 [with Shahid Rahman and Farid Zidani] “It Ought to be Forbidden! Islamic Heteronomous Imperatives and the Dialectical Forge.” In Lógica, Conocimiento y Abducción. Homenaje a Ángel Nepomuceno, 97-114. Eds. Cristina Barés, Francisco J. Salguero, Fernando Soler. Cuadernos de Lógica, Epistemología y Lenguaje 15. London: College Publications.
2020 Foreword. In Larry B. Miller, Islamic Disputation Theory: The Uses & Rules of Argument in Medieval Islam, pp. vii-xii. Logic, Argumentation & Reasoning 21. Cham: Springer.
2019 “Concomitance to Causation: Arguing Dawarān in the Proto-Ādāb al-Baḥth.” In Philosophy and Jurisprudence in the Islamic World, pp. 205-281. Ed. Peter Adamson. Philosophy in the Islamic World in Context 1. Berlin; Boston: De Gruyter.
2018 “Al-Samarqandī’s Third Mas’ala: Juridical Dialectic Governed by the Ādāb al-Baḥth.” Oriens 46.1-2, Rationalist Disciplines and Postclassical Islamic Legal Theories, pp. 62-128.
2016 “Mulāzama in Action in the Early Ādāb al-Baḥth.” Oriens 44.3-4, Major Issues and Controversies of Arabic Logic, pp. 332-385.
2016 Book Review. Behnam Sadeghi, The Logic of Law Making in Islam: Women and Prayer in the Legal Tradition. Journal of the American Oriental Society 136.1, pp. 227-230.
ENCYCLOPEDIA ENTRIES
2021 “Dialectic in the Religious Sciences.” In Encyclopaedia of Islam Three. Eds. Kate Fleet, Gudrun Krämer, Denis Matringe, John Nawas, and Everett Rowson. Leiden: Brill.
2014 “Karakī, ʿAlī al-.” In The Oxford Encyclopedia of Islam and Politics. Oxford UP.
2013 “Origins of Islamic Law.” In Oxford Encyclopedias of the Islamic World: Digital Collection. Oxford UP.
POSTPRINTS (by year submitted)
2023 “Four Moves to Rule Them All: Qiyās-dialectic Metatheories and the Ascendancy of Master-Category Objections in Post-Classical Islamicate Dialectics.” For Logic, Soul, and World: Studies in Honor of Tony Street. Eds. Asad Q. Ahmed, Riccardo Strobino, and Mohammad Saleh Zarepour. Leiden: Brill.
2020 “Islamic Legal Theoretical and Dialectical Approaches to Fallacies of Correlation and Causation (7th-8th/13th-14th centuries).” For Islamic Legal Theory: Intellectual History and Uṣūl al-Fiqh. Eds. R. Gleave and M. Bedir. Leiden: Brill.
2015 “Have You Considered (A-ra’ayta)? Don’t You See/Opine (A-lā Tarā)? A Working Typology of Ra’ā Formulae in Early Islamic Juridical Disputation.” For Patterns of Argumentation and Exchange of Ideas in Late Antiquity and Early Islam. Eds. Y. Papadogiannakis and B. Roggema. Publications of the Centre for Hellenic Studies, King’s College London. Taylor and Francis Group.
PREPRINTS (by year submitted)
2024 “Uṣūlist Anticipations of the Conditional Perfection Problem: Abū l-Walīd al-Bājī’s Avoidance of Inverse Errors in the Iḥkām al-Fuṣūl fī Aḥkām al-Uṣūl,” for Proceedings of the 12th Annual AMI Contemporary Fiqhī Issues Workshop: “Language and Meaning in Islamic Legal Theory”, 3-4 July 2024, AMI Press.
2024 “Gelenbevi’s Risālat al-Ādāb fī Ādāb al-Baḥth wa-l-Munāẓara: An annotated translation”, for Ismāʿīl Gelenbevī: The Life, Works, and Thought of an 18th Century Ottoman Polymath. Ed. Yasser Qureshy. De Gruyter.
2024 [ولا نعلم فيه مخالفا إلا الخوارج" : نظر جديد إلى قضية إنكار الرجم] [= “‘And we know of no one opposing this but the Kharijites’: A New Look at Denying the Stoning Penalty.” Slated for publication in [دورية نماء] (Dawriyyat Namāʾ, Namaa Journal for Islamic Studies https://namajournal.com/index.php/nj )
[2022 “Juristic Dialectic in the Genres of ʿIlm al-Jadal and ʿIlm al-Khilāf.” For Handbook for Islamic Legal Genres: Form, Function and Historical Development. Eds. Necmettin Kızılkaya and Hakkı Arslan. De Gruyter (Law & Literature).
PRE-SUBMISSION (with approximate percentage completed)
75% “Mullā Ḥanafī on al-Ījī’s outline: An encounter with Later-Middle-Period Islamic Dialectics,” for A Handbook of Arabic Logic. Eds. Tony Street and Mohammad Saleh Zarepour. Springer.
90% “Engraving Munāẓara on the Mind: Gelenbevi’s Illustrative Examples in the Risālat al-Ādāb,” for Ismāʿīl Gelenbevī: The Life, Works, and Thought of an 18th Century Ottoman Polymath. Ed. Yasser Qureshy. De Gruyter.
90% “Prelude to a History of Naqḍ (Inconsistency & Untenable Entailment) in Islamicate Dialectics,” for Journal of Philosophy and Sciences in Muslim Contexts, Gen. Ed. Fouad ben Ahmed
90% On the Protocols for Dialectical Inquiry (Ādāb al-Baḥth): A Critical Edition and Parallel Translation of the Sharḥ al-Risāla al-Samarqandiyya by Quṭb al-Dīn al-Kīlānī (fl. ca. 830/1427), Prefaced by a Critical Edition and Parallel Translation of its Grundtext: the Risāla fī Ādāb al-Baḥth by Shams al-Dīn al-Samarqandī (d.722/1322)
75% “Distilling New-Old Fallacy Types from Medieval Islamic Juristic Dialectic: From Objection & Response to Fallacy & Solution”
25% Dialecticians in the Margins: Common Glosses on Quṭb al-Dīn al-Kīlānī’s Sharḥ al-Risāla al-Samarqandiyya
Courses
Central Questions in Islamic Law (McGill: 2010-11, 2020, 2024)
Islamic Law and Society (Concordia: 2023)
