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Mohamed-Ali Mostfa

Associate professor Member of Research groups Scientific Committee Speaker Congress 21-22

Mohamed-Ali Mostfa is scientific delegate of Pluriel, Associate Professor at the Catholic University of Lyon (UCLy) and habilitated to direct research (HDR) in sociology. He holds a doctorate in English linguistics and cultures and is a member of the Confluence: Sciences and Humanities Research Unit (EA 1598), research fellow at the Centre for the Study of Cultures and Religions (CECR), and co-coordinator of the “Mohammed Arkoun” Islamic Studies program, run in partnership with UCLy, Jean Moulin University Lyon 3, Lumière University Lyon 2 and Sciences Po Lyon.

His research addresses the symbolic construction of the Islamic religious fact in the French public sphere, at the intersection of discourse analysis and the social sciences. Drawing on pragmatic linguistics, performativity theory, critical sociology and narrative analysis, he examines the tensions between normative institutional discourse and experiential narratives from the margins. He also pays close attention to contemporary literary corpora as sites where social imaginaries and narrative resistances are forged.

His work focuses in particular on the discursive production of “Islam of France”, examining categories generated by institutions (such as separatism, radicality, communitarianism) against literary and social counter-narratives. This approach aims to illuminate the dynamics of normalization, stigmatization and subjectivation at work in the interactions between dominant discourse and everyday lived experience.

Disciplines

Islam Studies

Topics

Arabic Language Discourse Analysis - Hermeneutics Fundamentalism Islam in Europe

Resources of this researcher

Research Group

Islam and Otherness: Contextualizations, Transformations, and Influences

The research group at the Catholic University of Lyon has delved into the question of religious otherness, following their examination of authority and regulation in Islam. Using cross-disciplinary perspectives that involve dogmas, discourse, doctrines and reference texts, the contributions aim to examine, from a specific approach (philosophical, theological, political, religious, anthropological, historical), the plurality of forms, places, and perspectives that allow for considering the normative values that gov…

Université catholique de Lyon France

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Resources related toDiscourse Analysis - Hermeneutics

article

The grammar of sacred violence: A critical discourse analysis of radical Islamist writings

Mohamed-Ali Mostfa

This article offers a discursive analysis of two contemporary Islamist texts that present violence not as a deviation from religious normativity, but as its necessary, even redemptive expression. I...

article

Beyond Representation: Systemic Epistemic Alterity and the Architecture of Knowledge in the Contemporary Academy

Wael Saleh

In this article, published in two parts by Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective (SERRC), Wael Saleh, a researcher at the University of Quebec in Montreal (UQAM) and a member of Pluriel's...

videos

From word to virtue: Ibn Ḥazm and the aesthetics of discourse

Paper presented at the 5th international congress of the University Platform for Research on Islam (Pluriel), held in Cordoba from 10 to 14 February 2026 on the theme "Ethics and Aesthetics in Isla...

article

Mind the Gap: Mimicry and Subjectivation in Racialised Discourses

Noemi Trucco

Abstract Published in the collective volume Adaptive Subjekte. Linking Collaboration and Contradiction (eds. F. Brodersen, D. Pokitsch, S. Röhrer and N. Trucco, Wiesbaden, Springer VS, 2026), this ...

publication

Sayyid Qutb. Architect of Radical Islamism

Mounia Ait Kabboura

The thought of Sayyid Qutb (1906–1966) has profoundly shaped a wide range of religio-political movements, from the Muslim Brotherhood to Salafi-jihadists, radicalizing political Islam and inspiring...

videos

The Foundations of Arabic Grammatical Theory

Cairo. In a lecture delivered in Arabic on Saturday, January 25, 2025, at the Dominican Institute for Oriental Studies (IDEO) in Cairo, Professor Ramzi Baalbaki, holder of the Chair of Arabic...

publication

Speaking freely in Islam

Hamadi Redissi

What is the Islamic doctrine of blasphemy, insult to God, religion and the Prophet? What about the prohibition of figurative representation of Muhammad? Can one openly believe or abjure in Islam? T...

article

The Genre of the Mawlid Narrative in the mid-12th h./18th Century as Exemplified by al-Barzanjī

Antonio Cuciniello

Among the works of Arabic literature concerning the genre of Mawlid, certainly al-Barzanjī’s Mawlid is a text that has achieved great popularity and spread to large parts of the Islamic world. Inde...