videos

Spiritual poetry, hermeneutics and theology in contemporary Shi’i Iran: Soroush, Shabestari, Malekian and Rūmī

Paper presented at the fifth 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 Is...

article

“An Anthropology of Imamite Love among Iranian Believers”, by Sepideh Parsapajouh

• Sepideh Parsapajouh

In the volume honouring the Islamic-studies scholar Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi, De la lettre à l'esprit (eds. Orkhan Mir-Kasimov and Mathieu Terrier, Brepols, 2025), Sepideh Parsapajouh, an anthropol...

article

The Guide, Pivot of Creation: The Sources of Shi’i Gnosis

• Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi

The aim of the article is to explore the relationship between cosmo-anthropogony and Imamology in Shi'ism through its earliest sources in the corpus of pre-Buyid hadiths. It shows that the figure o...

videos

Unity of God and unity in God – a possible perspective and way of dialogue between the believers?

• Vanessa Breidy

A shῑ‘ῑ perspective of dialogue developed by D. Mohammad Ali Shomali. Talking about unity between believers and calling them to act upon it is not new in Islam. The Qur’ān and the early history o...

article

“A Religious Cosmopolitanism: The City of Qom in the Mirror of Transnational Circulations”, by Sepideh Parsapajouh

• Sepideh Parsapajouh

In the collective volume Un Moyen-Orient ordinaire (eds. Thierry Boissière and Yoann Morvan, Diacritiques Éditions, 2022), Sepideh Parsapajouh, an anthropologist at the CNRS (CéSor-EHESS), devotes ...

videos

The Hidden Imam and religious and spiritual authority in Shia Islam

• Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi

Conference « Religious Authority in Islam », organised by the Centre for the Study of Cultures and Religions and the Research Unit of the Catholic University of Lyon (UCLy), on 18 and 19 November 2...

publication

MIDEO 36 – Iǧtihād and taqlīd in Sunnī and Šīʿī Islam

• Emmanuel Pisani

The theme of iǧtihād and taqlīd, by pointing to the notional antagonism between independent reasoning on the one hand and submission to the argument of authority on the other, plunges us into the h...

article

“The Power of Place, the Mediation of the Text: Anthropological Remarks on the Pious Visit to Karbalā”, by Sepideh Parsapajouh

• Sepideh Parsapajouh

In the journal Studia Islamica (Brill, 2021), Sepideh Parsapajouh, an anthropologist at the CNRS (CéSor-EHESS), offers an anthropological analysis of the ziyāra, the pious visit to Shia holy places...