Contextualizing Islam and its Complex History

Topic:
This lecture aims to provide an informed view of Islam underlining how any attempt to understand such religious tradition needs to account for the complex historical context and development of Islam, distinguishing between the premodern and the modern periods.  Such a nuanced approach shall serve to debunk rampant misconceptions about Islam, often reducing its geography, society, and political history into one monolith static perception that cannot withstand any serious scrutiny. Building up on Shahab Ahmed’s perspective in What is Islam? The Importance of Being Islamic, I shall showcase how the broader geography, the heterogeneous identities, and the complex political system of Islam throughout history tell a different story.

About the speaker:
Feriel Bouhafa is a scholar of Arabic/Islamic philosophy with a focus on moral/legal philosophy in medieval thought. After receiving her Ph.D. from Georgetown University in 2016, she took fellowships at Harvard Centre of Middle Eastern Studies, the Orient Institute in Beirut, and the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg. Later, she joined the Faculty of Divinity at the University of Cambridge where she served as a lecturer (2017-2020 senior research associate (2020-2021). Since October 2021, She has been appointed as the junior professor for Islamic and Arabic studies (tenure track) at the Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg.

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Note: All interdisciplinary courses can be credited for the GSiK certificates for area E.