American Journal of Islam and Society Vol 39 No 3-4.indb 2 Editorial Note O V A M I R A N J U M I want to begin by congratulating my colleagues at the helm of the American Journal of Islam and Society (AJIS), as well as readers and con- tributors, that the journal is now finally SCOPUS-indexed. Consistently in circulation since its establishment in 1984, AJIS is now an open-access, biannual, double-blind peer-reviewed and interdisciplinary journal with global reach. Its newly acquired formal status speaks to its consistently high standards of scholarship and invites an ever-larger group of aspiring and senior scholars to publish their finest work on a variety of areas in Islamic thought and society. The issue of the American Journal of Islam and Society comprises four contributions, each exploring a different way in which Islam and soci- ety interact. Wardah AlKatiri proposes an Islamic vision to address the world’s deteriorating environmental prospects; Yousef Wahb addresses the challenge of upholding Islamic communal norms in North America; Sami al-Daghistani aspires to put the field of Islamic economics into conversation with classical Islamic ethics and spirituality; and Tabinda Khan addresses a theoretical lacuna in Western political scientists’ study of Islamism. Wardah AlKatiri’s article “How about a Green Caliphate? Global Islamic Environmental Governance for Devout Muslim Communities” boldly proposes a “Green Caliphate,” that is, a faith-motivated environmental E d i t O R i A L N O t E  3 governance for a network of Muslim societies, ones that place local Muslim community at its heart. The specter of the ecological judgment against human exploitation of God’s earth has led to disastrous consequences for the planet. Paradoxically, the greatest victims of this cosmic crime are the poorest societies on earth that have seen none of the great prosperity that the elite of the Global North speak of. The Green Caliphate emerges against the background of climate emergency from multiple perspectives: social justice, knowledge sharing, and cultural transformation. Drawing on Schumacher’s Small is Beautiful and Ovamir Anjum’s “Who Wants the Caliphate?”, this article broaches the concept of a Green Caliphate in pursuit of the Fourth World, a world beyond what can be captured by the iniquitous and exploitative models in place. Yousef Wahb’s “Competing Authorities: Islamic Family Law and Quasi-Judicial Proceedings in North America” addresses a crucial chal- lenge facing Muslims who seek to resolve their private disputes. Since Islamic marriage and divorce laws do not always align with North American family legislative schemes, Muslims are burdened with trying to simultaneously meet their obligations toward both legal systems. Unlike secular law, Islamic divorce proceedings, for instance, require either the husband’s eventual consent or the availability of a Muslim judge; they prescribe substantive obligations and rights for divorcees that are comparable to corollary relief provided by family law statutes. The paper recommends a holistic framework to settle family disputes in compliance with Islamic law and in a legally enforceable manner. A proper institutionalization of Islamic alternative dispute resolution (ADR) services can go a long way in ensuring Islamically-complaint forms of divorce, annulment, corollary relief, and other situations, and may facilitate the role of a secular court to secure relief in religiously compatible ways such that its involvement could be limited to the enforcement of rights that are pre-approved by Islamic law. Sami al-Daghistani’s intervention in Islamic economic discourse, titled “Beyond Maṣlaḥah: Adab and Islamic Economic Thought,” focuses on maṣlaḥah (benefit or well-being) and adab (righteous behavior or character) as ethically intertwined concepts that are discussed in relation to the acquisition of wealth (kasb) by certain classical Muslim scholars 4  A M E R i C A N J O U R N A L O F i S L A M A N d S O C i E t Y 3 9 : 3 - 4 such as al-Shaybāni (d. 805), al-Muḥāsibī (d. 857), Ibn Abī al-Dunyā (d. 894), al-Māwardī (d. 1058), and al-Ghazālī (d. 1111). Personal piety in this ethically defined world is closely related to righteous economic behav- ior under the banner of adab’s moral stipulations. Maṣlaḥah ordinarily pertains to safeguarding economic activities and preserving wealth; our author proposes that it can simultaneously be seen as a derivative of adab. Tabinda Khan, in her paper titled “Challenges with Studying Islamist Groups in American Political Science,” contends that the lack of dis- ciplinary dialogue between political theory and comparative politics compromises the understanding of the politics of traditional Islamic scholars and Islamists in American political science. The empirically-im- poverished textualist readings of Islamic politics in the field of political theory and the theoretically simplistic liberal frameworks of comparative politics both produce unsatisfactory results, she observes. By contrast, the interdisciplinary field of Islamic legal studies might have the poten- tial to bridge the division between political science, law, and area studies approaches to the study of Muslim societies. Together these papers offer fantastic food for thought and points of departure for further study in a variety of fields. Ovamir Anjum Editor, American Journal of Islam and Society Imam Khattab Endowed Chair of Islamic Studies Professor, Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies Affiliated Faculty, Department of History University of Toledo, Toledo, OH doi: 10.35632/ajis.v39i3-4.3194