Wael Tahhan
Wael Tahhan is a temporary teaching and research fellow (ATER) and a doctoral candidate in aesthetics at Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, where he teaches aesthetics and the philosophy of art. He is affiliated with the Institut ACTE (research strand “Aesthetics and Critical Theories of Culture”).
Trained in aesthetics and Arabic studies, his research unfolds along two complementary lines: the first addresses the question of aesthetics in Arab-Islamic thought; the second examines issues related to artistic and spatial practices in the Middle East and the Islamic world.
At the fifth Pluriel congress, held in Cordoba in February 2026, he offered a reading of ghaḍḍ al-baṣar (the lowering of the gaze) as a paradigm for an Islamic aesthetics, drawing on the thought of three Sufi authors: al-Muḥāsibī, al-Qushayrī and al-Ghazālī.
Resources related to
Islam Studies
article
A Fragrant Spiritual Heritage. Some Considerations on Perfumes in Islam
- Ida Zilio-Grandi
Abstract Published in volume 20 (2025) of Quaderni di Studi Arabi, this article by Ida Zilio-Grandi (Ca' Foscari University of Venice) revisits a constant of Islamic history that has attracted r...
publication
The Virtues of the Good Muslim
- Ida Zilio-Grandi
Published in 2025 by Edizioni Ca’ Foscari in Venice, this monograph by Ida Zilio-Grandi (Ca’ Foscari University) is the augmented English translation of Le virtù del buon Musulmano, fir...
publication
Without Judaism, No Islam. The Denied Source
- Mouhanad Khorchide
Published under the original title Ohne Judentum kein Islam. Die verleugnete Quelle, with the subtitle Die Wurzeln des muslimischen Antisemitismus. Eine aktuelle Analyse (“The Roots of Muslim...
article
Literary, Semiotic and Hermeneutical Approaches to the Qur’an in the Modern Period
- Wasim Salman
Abstract In this contribution to issue 51 (Mélanges) of the journal Islamochristiana, published in Italian as Approcci letterari, semiotici ed ermeneutici al Corano nel periodo moderno, Wasim Sa...
videos
A Muslim Reads St Paul: Recording of the Symposium on Shabbir Akhtar Now Online
- David Marshall
- Gabriel Said Reynolds
On 9 September 2026, the Institute for the Study of Religion in the Middle East (ISRME) and the Pontifical Institute for Arabic and Islamic Studies (PISAI, Rome) held an online symposium on The New...
publication
ʿAbd al-Mutaʿāl al-Ṣaʿīdī (1894-1971): A Defence of Religious Freedom
- Youssouf Sangaré
Published in 2024 in the collective volume Théologies musulmanes du pluralisme religieux (ed. Emmanuel Pisani, Éditions du Cerf, proceedings of the ISTR symposium of 20-21 November 2021, pp. 65-88)...
publication
Cosmic and Animal Piety in Islam: Everything Glorifies God
- Geneviève Gobillot
- Pierre Lory
- Florence Ollivry
- Guillaume de Vaulx d'Arcy
Edited by Walid Ghali, Guillaume de Vaulx d’Arcy, Asmaa El Maaroufi and Nicolas Payen, this collective volume examines the concept of praise (tasbīḥ) in Islam, in its human and nonhuman expre...
publication
Islamic Lessons for Christians
- Gabriel Said Reynolds
Islamic Lessons for Christians (Oneworld Publications, 2026) is the latest book by Gabriel Said Reynolds, Crowley Professor of Islamic Studies and Theology at the University of Notre Dame. What, if...