Teaching & Academic
Teaching law, citizenship, and religious identity.
Jalal teaches at Wayne State University Law School and the University of Detroit Mercy School of Law. His courses introduce students to Islamic legal thought and examine how law shapes citizenship, identity, and belonging.
Teaching Philosophy
A working literacy, not a tour.
Students don't leave with trivia. They leave with the capacity to read a contract, a case, or a client through a lens most of their peers will never have, and to do it without condescension and without apology.
Reading lists are heavy on primary sources. Discussion is rigorous but never combative. The goal is not to admire the tradition. The goal is to use it.
Current Appointments
Sit in. Or bring it to your school.
Aug 2024, Present
University of Detroit Mercy School of Law
Islamic Law
A course that gives students the foundation and the tools to practice law with cultural competence in a world that no longer makes that optional.
Aug 2023, Present
Wayne State University Law School
Islamic Law · Citizenship · Islamophobia and the Law
Not a survey of an exotic tradition, a working literacy in a legal system that touches more clients, more contracts, and more courtrooms every year.
Scholarship
Authority, legitimacy, and belonging.
Jalal's legal scholarship examines authority, legitimacy, and belonging across constitutional law and the Islamic legal tradition. His forthcoming article, 'Conditional Citizenship: Judicial Deference, Identity-Based Suspicion, and the Afterlife of Japanese American Internment,' will appear in the Wayne Law Review.
Academic Focus
What gets taught
- 01Islamic law and legal thought
- 02Citizenship
- 03Religious identity and the law
- 04Constitutional law
- 05Comparative legal frameworks
- 06Law & ethics
- 07Faith-based analysis of modern legal questions
- 08Culturally competent legal practice