2017 International Meeting Participants

INTERNATIONAL MEETING 2017 

Co-hosted by Beit al Hikma and the
International Qur’anic Studies Association (IQSA)
Carthage, Tunisia.

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الدراسات القرآنية: المناهج، السياقات والتأويلات

Quranic Studies: Methods, Contexts and Interpretations 

Les études coraniques : méthodes, contextes et interprétations 

*

July, 4-6 2017

This international meeting is convened
by Pr. Abdelmajid Charfi and Pr. Mokdad Arfa (for Beit al Hikma)
and by Pr. Mehdi Azaiez (for IQSA).

 

 

SPEAKERS (IQSA Participants)

Mehdi Azaiez is Assistant Professor of Islamic Theology and Studies at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium. He completed his Ph.D. at the University of Aix-en-Provence. His main fields of research are Qurʾanic Studies and early Islam. During 2012–2013, he was an instructor in Islamic Studies at the University of Notre Dame and co-director, along with Gabriel Said Reynolds, of the “Qurʾan Seminar,”an academic project dedicated to increasing scholarly understanding of the qurʾanic text. He recently published Le Contre-discours coranique and Le Coran. Nouvelles approches.

Emran El-Badawi is Associate Professor and Program Director of Middle Eastern Studies at the Department of Modern and Classical Languages at the University of Houston (UH). He is author of The Qurʾan and the Aramaic Gospel Traditions (Routledge, 2013), co-author of A History of the Classical Middle East (Cognella, forthcoming) and editor of Communities of the Qurʾan (in progress). He teaches courses on Islamic Civilization as well as the modern Middle East. At UH he is responsible for three undergraduate degree programs, consulting for the private sector and government, and partnering with community organizations on a variety of initiatives. El-Badawi is founding Executive Director and Treasurer of the International Qurʾanic Studies Association, starting his rst term in 2014. He received his Ph.D. with honors from the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago.

Carol Bakhos is Professor of Late Antique Judaism at the University of California Los Angeles, and Director of the Center for the Study of Religion. Her recent book, The Family of Abraham, translated into Turkish, examines Jewish, Christian and Muslim interpretations of the biblical and Qurʾanic stories about Abraham, Sarah, Hagar, Ishmael, and Isaac. She is co-editing the forthcoming book Islam and its Past with Michael Cook. She served as Vice President of Membership and Outreach of the Association for Jewish Studies and is currently the Co-Editor of the AJS Review.

Jacqueline Chabbi is Professor emeritus of Arabic studies at the University of Paris 8 Vincennes–Saint-Denis. She has worked to develop an application of this historical-anthropological approach to the Qur’an for over twenty years. She published three books on the period of the origins of Islam: « Le Seigneur des tribus, l’islam de Mahomet” (Paris, Noésis, 1997, 2010, 2013) ; “Le Coran décrypté, Figures bibliques en Arabie”  (Fayard Paris, 2008 réed Cerf 2014) ; « Les Trois piliers de l’islam, lecture anthropologique du Coran » 2016).

Michel Cuypers is from Belgium and lives in Cairo. He lived twelve years in Iran, where he obtained a PhD in Persian literature at the University of Tehran. He was one of the co-founders of Luqmân, a journal of iranology. Michel Cuypers left Iran in 1986 and, after studying Arabic, he became a researcher at IDEO (Cairo), where he focuses on the rhetoric analysis of the Qur’ân. He published « Le Festin. Une lecture de la sourate al-Mâ’ida » (English translation: The banquet: A reading of the fifth Sura of the Qur’an, Convivium Press, 2009) ; « La Composition du Coran. نظم القرآن (English translation: The composition of the Qur’an, Bloomsbury, 2015) and « Une apocalypse coranique. Une lecture des trente-trois dernières sourates du Coran » (éd. Gabalda, 2014) in which he summarizes and develops his previous articles on the latest chapters of the Qur’an.

Rufino Enno H. Dango is Ph.D. Candidate, World Religion World Church, University of Notre Dame.

Fred M. Donner is Professor of Near Eastern History in the Oriental Institute and Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago. His main field of research is the origins of Islam and early Islamic History. He is the author of Muhammad and the Believers: At the Origins of Islam and Narratives of Islamic Origins: The Beginnings of Islamic Historical Writing.

Farid Esack is a South African scholar of Islam and public intellectual who completed the Darsi Nizami in traditional madrasahs in Karachi, Pakistan, and his Ph.D. at the University of Birmingham, UK. Since 2000, Esack has been teaching at the University of Johannesburg (UJ), where he is Professor in the Study of Islam and head of its Department of Religion Studies. In addition to serving as a Commissioner for Gender Equality in the  rst South African democratic government (appointed by President Mandela) and heading a number of leading national and international not-for-pro t entities, he has taught religion, Islamic Studies, and Qurʾanic Studies in South Africa (University of Western Cape, Cape Town and UJ), Europe (Universities of Amsterdam and Hamburg), the United States (College of William and Mary, Union Theological Seminary, Xavier University, and Harvard Divinity School) and in Asia (International Islamic University of Islamabad and Gaja Mada University in Yogjakarta). In addition to many peer- reviewed articles, Farid Esack is the author of several monographs, including Qurʾan, Liberation & Pluralism: An Islamic Perspective of Interreligious Solidarity Against Oppression, On Being a Muslim: Finding a Religious Path in the World Today, and An Introduction to the Qurʾan. His current research interests (Jews in the Qurʾan and socio-economic justice in the Qurʾan) re ect his scholarly interest both in contemporary Islam and in the classical tafsir tradition.

Gerald Hawting is an Emeritus Professor in the Department of History at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London since 2009. He specializes in the study of the emergence and early development of Islam, and among his publications are The Idea of Idolatry and the Emergence of Islam and “Pilgrimage to Mecca: Human Responses to a Divine Command” in Klaus Herbers and Hans Christian Lehner (eds.), On the Road in the Name of Religion: Pilgrimage as a Means of Coping with Contingency and Fixing the Future in the World’s Major Religions.

Asma Hilali is a Research Associate in the Department of Academic Research and Publications at The Institute of Ismaili Studies. She gained her PhD from l’École Pratique des Hautes Études, Paris. Dr Hilali has worked in various research centres in Germany, France and the United Kingdom. Her main interest is related to the transmission of religious literature in early and mediaeval Islam, and the issues of how religious texts were used and what impact this use had on their forms and contents.

Thomas Hoffmann holds a MA in comparative religion from the University of Copenhagen and received his Ph.D. in 2005 for the dissertation “The Poetic Qur’an: Studies on Qur’anic Poeticity” (later published by Harrassowitz 2007). He is now professor MSO (i.e. with special responsibilities) in Qur’anic and Islamic Studies at The Faculty of Theology, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. This position is intended to broaden the scope of standard theological studies and prove the relevance for historical, intertextual, and theological ties between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. He has recently edited the anthology Muslims and the New Information and Communication Technologies (2013). His main research interest is in the exploration of literary and critical theories and their transference to Qur’anic studies.

Samy Larbès is an independent scholar. His research focuses on the rhetoric analysis of the Qur’ân.

Andrew J. O’Connor is a Ph.D. student in the World Religion area of the Theology Departement at the University of Notre Dame. He also holds a B.A. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a M.A. in Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Chicago. His research interests include the Qur’ân and the historical development of Islamic theology. 

Johanna Pink received her MA degree from the University of Bonn in 1998 and her PhD from the same university with a dissertation on new religious communities in Egypt in 2002. She held positions as a postdoctoral fellow, researcher and lecturer at the University of Tübingen and the Free University Berlin from 2002 to 2009. Between 2009 and 2011 she acted as a visiting professor at these two universities and was then granted a Heisenberg fellowship by the German Research Foundation (DFG). She has been Professor for Islamic Studies and the History of Islam at the University of Freiburg since 2012.Her research interests include early modern and modern Qur‘anic exegesis, Qur‘an translations with a special focus on Indonesia, the status of non-Muslims in Muslim majority societies and religious discourses, and the recent history of Egypt.

Yusuf Rahman is a lecturer at the Faculty of Usuluddin and Graduate School, Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University in Jakarta, Indonesia. He received his Ph.D. from Institute of Islamic Studies, McGill University Montreal Canada in 2001 on “The Hermeneutical Theory of Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd: An Analytical Study of His Method of Interpreting the Qur’an.”

Gabriel Said Reynolds did his doctoral work at Yale University in Islamic Studies and is currently Professor of Islamic Studies and Theology in the Department of Theology at the University of Notre Dame. Among his works on the Qurʾan is The Qurʾan and Its Biblical Subtext. In 2012–13 he directed, along with Mehdi Azaiez, “The Qurʾan Seminar,” a year-long collaborative project dedicated to encouraging dialogue among scholars of the Qurʾan, the acts of which will appear as The Qurʾan Seminar Commentary. He is currently a Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Studies in Nantes (France), Chair of the Executive Board of the International Qurʾanic Studies Association, and completing a brief commentary on the Qurʾan for Yale University Press. At Notre Dame, he teaches courses on theology, Muslim/Christian relations, and Islamic origins.

Abdullah Saeed is currently the Sultan of Oman Professor of Arab and Islamic Studies and Director of the National Centre of Excellence for Islamic Studies at the University of Melbourne, Australia. He is also a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Humanities. His research focuses on the negotiation of text and context, ijtihad, and interpretation. Among his publications are: Islamic Banking and Interest; the coauthored Freedom of Religion, Apostasy and Islam; Interpreting the Qurʾan: Towards a Contemporary Approach; The Qurʾan: An Introduction; Islamic Political Thought and Governance (ed.); Islam and Human Rights (ed.); and Reading the Qurʾan in the Twentieth Century: Towards a Contextualist Approach. He is currently working (with Andrew Rippin) on a major research project on the reception of ideas associated with critical historical approaches to the Qurʾan in Muslim higher education institutions. Saeed works closely with various government departments and international organizations and contributes to their projects relating to Islam and Islamic thought. He is currently a member of the UNESCO Commission of Australia of the Department of Foreign A airs of Australia. He contributes to print and electronic media on Islamic issues. He has a wide range of professional and research relationships around the world, and is on the editorial board of several international refereed journals. He is also well-known for his interfaith activities in Australia and overseas, and for his contributions to this area, he was awarded the Order of Australia in 2013.

Mun’im Sirry is an Assistant Professor of Theology in the Department of Theology with additional responsibilities for the “Contending Modernities Initiative” at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, University of Notre Dame. He earned his Ph.D. in Islamic Studies from the University of Chicago’s Divinity School. His academic interest includes political theology, modern Islamic thought, Qurʾanic Studies, and interreligious relations. His publications have appeared in several peer-reviewed journals, including Arabica, BSOAS, Interpretation, Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations, Journal of Semitic Studies, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, The Muslim World, Studia Islamica, and Die Welt des Islams. His most recent book is entitled Scriptural Polemics: the Qurʾan and Other Religions.

Devin Stewart is Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies at Emory University. His research has focused on Islamic law and legal education, the text of the Qurʾan, Shi’ite Islam, Islamic sectarian relations, and Arabic dialectology. His published works include Islamic Legal Orthodoxy: Twelver Shiite Responses to the Sunni Legal System and a number of articles on leading Shi’ite scholars of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. His work on the Qurʾan includes “Saj’ in the Qurʾan: Prosody and Structure” in the Journal of Arabic Literature and “Rhymed Prose” in the revised edition of the Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾan.

Sarra Tlili is Associate Professor of Arabic Language and Literature at the University of Florida, Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures. She obtained her Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations in 2009. Her main areas of research are animals in Islam, stylistics of the Qurʾan, and Tunisian literature. Her publications include Animals in the Qurʾan, “All Animals Are Equal, or Are They: The Ikhwan al-Safa’s Animal Epistle and its Unhappy End” in the Journal of Qurʾanic Studies, and “Innocence, Maturation and Liberation: The Maturation Process in al-Midani b. Salih’s Work” in Arabica.

David Vishanoff is associate Professor in the University of Oklahoma. He earned his Ph.D. in West and South Asian Religions, with a focus on Islamic thought, at Emory University, after completing an M.A. in Religious Studies at the University of Colorado. His research is principally concerned with how religious people interpret and conceptualize sacred texts—both their own, and those of other religious traditions. His publications have dealt with Islamic thought, including the early history of Islamic legal theory (The Formation of Islamic Hermeneutics: How Sunni Legal Theorists Imagined a Revealed Law), and with interactions between religious communities, including Muslim rewritings of the Psalms of David. He is presently studying modern Qur’anic hermeneutics, beginning with recent developments in Indonesia, where he spent the spring of 2013 as a Fulbright senior scholar. He teaches upper-level courses on The Qur’an, Islamic Law, and Islamic Theology, as well as comparative courses such as Jesus in the World’s Religions.

Hamza M. Zafer is the Assistant Professor of Islamic History and Classical Arabic at the University of Washington in Seattle. His research expertise is in early Islamic political and intellectual history (pre-900 CE). He works primarily on early and pre-Islamic Arabian sources in Arabic, Aramaic, Syriac, Hebrew, Greek, and Ge’ez. He is currently fininishing work on a book titled The Mother of Cities: A pre-history of the Islamic Empire.

 

– Beit al Hikma –

المشاركون

محمد بوهلال أستاذ التعليم العالي في الحضارة العربيّة بكلّيّة الآداب والعلوم الإنسانيّة، جامعة سوسة.  عضو المجلس الإسلامي الأعلى للجمهوريّة التونسيّة، مدير عامّ لمركز البحوث والدراسات في حوار الحضارات والأديان المقارنة بسوسة  (سابقا). دكتورا الدولة في الآداب، الموضوع: «عالَم الغيب وصلته بعالم الشهادة في الفكر الأشعري، الغزالي أنموذجا». من كتبه: «خطاب الصحوة السعوديّة مقاربة لموقفها من العلمانيّة والديمقراطيّة والمخالف الفقهي والعقدي»، بيروت، 2014؛ كتاب «الغيب والشهادة في فكر الغزالي» (أطروحة دكتورا دولة)، كلّيّة الآداب والعلوم الإنسانيّة بسوسة ودار محمّد علي الحامّي بصفاقس، 2003؛ كتاب «جدل السياسة والدين والمعرفة»، بيروت، 2011 ؛ «العقدي والمعرفي في علم الكلام»، نشر كلّيّة الآداب والعلوم الإنسانيّة بسوسة،  2008
bouhmed2@yahoo.fr 

بسام الجمل. أستاذ تعليم عال بكلية الآداب والعلوم الإنسانيّة بصفاقس.  دكتورا في اللغة والآداب العربيّة، من الكتب: أسباب النزول، بيروت 2005؛ من الرمز إلى الرمز الديني. بحث في المعنى والوظائف والمقاربات، صفاقس، 2007؛ ليلة القدر في المتخيّل الإسلامي، دمشق، 2007؛ جدل التاريخ والمتخيّل: سيرة فاطمة، منشورات مؤسسة مؤمنون بلا حدود للدراسات والأبحاث، 2016.
bassemjmal@yahoo.fr 

ابراهيم محمد الزين، جامعة حمد بن خليفة، قطر
dribrahimz@yahoo.com 

محمد الحاج سالم. باحث في الإناسة الدينيّة والسياسيّة ومترجم، مستشار بمعهد لندن للاقتصاديّات والعلوم السياسيّة (LSE)، رئيس وحدة البحوث حول السلفيّة بالمعهد التونسي للدّراسات الاستراتيجيّة (سابقاً). من الكتب: من الزّكاة الإسلاميّة إلى الميسر الجاهلي: قراءة إناسيّة في نشأة الدّولة الإسلاميّة، بيروت، 2014؛ – في الدين والسياسة والمجتمع: حوارات إناسيّة، تونس، 2014 hajsalem1959@gmail.com

ناجي الحجلاوي. أستاذ مساعد بالمعهد العالي للحضارة الإسلامية بجامعة الزيتونة، تونس. من مؤلّفاته: الأطروحة بعنوان: التّفسير بين النظر والأثر، الجّبائي والطبري أنموذجا؛ عائشة أم المؤمنين  بين الدّين والتّاريخ ؛ التّفكير الاجتماعي عند مالك بن نبيّ؛ المنهج المعتزليّفي التّفسير
hajlaoui.neji@gmail.com 

عبد الرحمن الحللي. باحث وأستاذ جامعي سوري، زائر في جامعة برلين الحرة، وزميل المركز العربي للأبحاث ودراسة السياسات بالدوحة
ahelali2000@gmail.com

سامر الرشواني. باحث متخصص في دراسة القرآن وعلومه، تخرج في كلية الشريعة بجامعة دمشق، وحصل على الدكتوراه من كلية دار العلوم بجامعة القاهرة. عمل مدرسا في جامعتي دمشق وحلب، قبل أن ينتقل إلى برلين باحثا زائرا في مركز الدراسات العابرة للأقاليم، ويعمل حاليا أستاذا في معهد العلوم الإسلامية بجامعة توبنغن، ألمانيا
srashwani@hotmail.com

فريدة زمرد. أستاذ التعليم العالي في التفسير وعلوم القرآن (المفاهيم والمصطلحات القرآنية)، مؤسسة دار الحديث الحسنية للتعليم العالي والبحث العلمي، الرباط. دكتوراه في الدراسات الإسلامية.  منشورات: مفهوم التأويل في القرآن الكريم، دراسة مصطلحية، مركز الدراسات القرآنية، الرابطة المحمدية للعلماء، 2013؛ معجم المصطلحات القرآنية المعرفة في تفسير الطبري، فاس، 2005؛ أزمة النص في مفهوم النص عند نصر حامد أبو زيد، فاس، 2005؛ الدرس المصطلحي للقرآن الكريم: بين التأصيل والتطوير (قيد الطبع)؛ مفاهيم بناء المعرفة والمجتمع الإنساني في القرآن الكريم (قيد الطبع)؛ رؤى تجديدية في التفسير والتأويل (قيد الطبع)؛ مفاهيم نبذ العنف ضد النساء في القرآن الكريم والسنة المطهرة
farida.zomorod@gmail.

ابراهيم محمد الزين. جامعة حمد بن خليفة، قطر.  تخصص في الفلسفة ومقارنة الأديان بجامعة تمبل بالولايات المتحدة الأمريكية.  اهتمامات علميّة: مقارنة الأديان من خلال النصوص الدينية التأسيسية (القرآن والتوراة وكتب الهندوسية والبوذية)، والإشكالات التي تتعلق بفهم خطاب القرن وتأويل نصوصه
dribrahimz@yahoo.com

وحيد السعفي. أستاذ التعليم العالي بكلية العلوم الإنسانية والاجتماعية، جامعة تونس. رئيس وحدة البحث: في قراءة الخطاب الديني. أهمّ المنشورات: العجيب والغريب في كتب تفسير القرآن، تونس، 2001؛ القربان في الجاهلية والإسلام، تونس، 2003 ؛ في قراءة الخطاب الديني، تونس، 2008
essaafiwahid@yahoo.fr

محمد الشتيوي. أستاذ تعليم عال بالمعهد العالي لأصول الدين جامعة الزيتونة. دكتوراه دولة في العلوم الإسلامية: علاقة علم أصول الفقه بعلم الكلام. من الكتب: علاقة علم أصول الفقه بعلم الكلام، بيروت، 2010؛ إشكالية التعارض في النصّ الديني، دمشق: 2010 و2013؛ التغيّر الدلالي وأثره في فهم النصّ القرآني، بيروت، 2011؛ الشرائع السابقة في الكتاب والسنّة، بيروت، 2011؛ حوار في القمّة، صورة الإسلام والمسلمين كما ينبغي أن تكون، تونس: 2013؛ المنطوق والمفهوم، تونس: 2015؛ إشكالية النقل والعقل في الفكر الإسلامي، تونس، 2015؛ تسبيح الأعلى في سورة الأعلى، تونس، 2015؛ نجوم سورة النّجم، تونس، 2015؛ فاتحة التنزيل سورة العلق وتأسيس القراءة بالإسم، تونس، 2015؛ تاريخ المذاهب الفقهية بإفريقية، تونس، 1998؛ أحكام الأرض في الفقه الإسلامي، تونس، 1999
mohamedchtiwi738@yahoo.com

عبد المجيد الشرفي (عمل جماعي)
amcharfi@gmail.com

مقداد عرفة
mokdadarfa@hotmail.com 

ماسيمو كامبانيني
massimo.campanini@tiscali.it