Mariangela Laviano

Visiting professor Member of Research groups

Mariangela Laviano is adjunct professor at the Pontifical Institute for Arabic and Islamic Studies (PISAI, Rome) and adjunct professor at the Pontifical Lateran University (PUL, Rome). She is also a visiting professor at the “Leoniano” Theological Institute (Anagni).

Her teaching and research interests include Arabic language, modern and contemporary Arab-Islamic exegesis, contemporary Arab-Islamic thought, Muslim-Christian relations, and inter-religious relations in the Mediterranean area.

She is a member of the seminar “Maison de la Sagesse” of the Institut Catholique de la Méditerranée in Marseille. She also holds a PhD in Arabic and Islamic Studies from the Pontifical Institute of Arabic and Islamic Studies defended in 2021 at the PISAI on the theme “Muḥammad ʻĀbid al-Ǧābirī: from the critique of Arabic reason to Qur’anic exegesis. Inclusivity and exclusivity’.

She holds a Master’s degree in Inter-Mediterranean Mediation: Economic, Investment and Intercultural Integration from Ca’ Foscari University in Venice, and a Bachelor’s degree in Oriental Languages and Civilizations from the University of Naples “L’Orientale”.

Resources related toDiscourse Analysis - Hermeneutics

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

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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...

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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...

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Sayyid Qutb. Architect of Radical Islamism

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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The History of the Quran according to Muslim Sources

  • Gabriel Said Reynolds

Professors Shady Nasser from Harvard and Gabriel Reynolds from the University of Notre Dame explore the history of the revelation and compilation of the Quran according to traditional Muslim source...

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Revival and Dynamics of Islamic Studies in Europe

  • Michel Younès
  • Emmanuel Pisani
  • Cédric Baylocq
  • Zohra Aziadé Zemirli
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  • Haoues Seniguer

“In a troubled international context where Islam is sometimes defined as an ideological marker of many conflicts, academic research drawing on history, sociology, and political science has mu...