Research Group

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Islam and Otherness (Paris)

In the global context of identity tensions, migratory flows, depreciation of the image of the Muslim world and its association to Daesh and al-Qaeda’s terrorist attacks, the Institute of Science and Theology of Religions in Paris intends to carry out a research on the capacity of Islam to maintain a constructive and peaceful relationship with the ‘other’, both within the Muslim world and with other religions and cultures.This investigation is crucial in order to guarantee a community life in the Muslim world and in the West in the years to come. It calls for a transdisciplinary methodology which is not only a matter of scholarly Islamology but also of linguistics, history, political science, geography, sociology, law or philosophical anthropology.

Our research will identify semantic fields and concepts related to otherness in the corpus of primary sources (Qur’an and Sunnah). Our research will also critically reconsider the specific body of medieval Muslim writings which is “hijacked” by Islamist groups and used as their source of legitimacy. If the historical, sociological and political study of the facts and the strategies deployed within movements or organizations is unavoidable, the original perspective of our research is to involve a properly theological, linguistic and symbolic examination on the key texts on which contemporary fundamentalist discourses are based, to study them from a linguistic angle, to identify their historical contexts, to analyze their rhetoric and to assess their symbolic purpose.

 

Group members

Charbel Attallah

Doctoral student in religious sciences at the École pratique des hautes études

Cédric Baylocq

Anthropologist, Associate Researcher at the Institute of Science and Theology of Religions, Catholic Institute of Paris

Houssame Bentabet

Doctor in sociology and islamologist, researcher

Amir Jajé

Doctor in oriental studies, specialist in Shia islam.

Sepideh Parsapajouh

Researcher in anthropology at the Centre d'études en sciences sociales du religieux, specialising in religious facts within Duodecimal Shia Islam

Emmanuel Pisani

Deputy General Coordinator of Pluriel, Director of the Dominican Institute for Oriental Studies, Cairo, Egypt

Youssouf Sangare

Senior Lecturer in Contemporary Civilization and the Arab World, University of Clermont Auvergne

Nasser Michaëlene-Gabryel

Doctor in political science, lecturer and researcher at the Institut Catholique de Paris, Director of research at the Institut Montpensier.

Anne-Sophie Vivier-Muresan

Doctor in theology and anthropology, director of the ISEO - Institut Supérieur d'Études Œcuméniques at the Institut catholique de Paris.

Zohra Aziadé Zemirli

Postdoctoral researcher in Law, Center for Population and Development (CEPED; IRD/University of Paris).

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