{"id":34441,"date":"2026-05-21T17:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-21T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pluriel.fuce.eu\/videos\/from-lavigerie-to-pisai-the-institutional-history-of-the-missionaries-of-africas-engagement-with-islam\/"},"modified":"2026-05-21T17:00:00","modified_gmt":"2026-05-21T16:00:00","slug":"from-lavigerie-to-pisai-the-institutional-history-of-the-missionaries-of-africas-engagement-with-islam","status":"publish","type":"videos","link":"https:\/\/pluriel.fuce.eu\/en\/videos\/from-lavigerie-to-pisai-the-institutional-history-of-the-missionaries-of-africas-engagement-with-islam\/","title":{"rendered":"From Lavigerie to PISAI: The Institutional History of the Missionaries of Africa&#8217;s Engagement with Islam"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Delivered on 21 May 2026 at the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pisai.it\/\"><strong>Pontifical Institute for Arabic and Islamic Studies<\/strong><\/a> (PISAI) in Rome, this lecture opens the series of conferences marking the institute&#8217;s centenary (1926-2026). Fr. <strong>Moussa Serge Traore<\/strong>, a Missionary of Africa from Burkina Faso, has recently completed a doctorate in history at the <em>School of Oriental and African Studies<\/em> (SOAS), University of London, and will soon join the Institute for Inter-Religious Dialogue and Islamic Studies at Tangaza University, Nairobi.<\/p>\n<p>Drawing on previously untapped minutes of the General Council of his Society, the speaker argues that the Missionaries of Africa&#8217;s engagement with Islam was neither a mere continuation of Cardinal Lavigerie&#8217;s personal vision, nor the cumulative outcome of individual scholarly initiatives. It is rather an <em>institutional<\/em> history, shaped by collective discernment, administrative arbitration and strategic adaptation.<\/p>\n<p>He retraces its key milestones: the first years of Saharan presence in 1872, marked by friendship and hospitality; the introduction in 1876 of a prayer to Our Lady of Africa for Muslims, which inscribed apostolate among Muslims at the very heart of the Society&#8217;s identity; the pragmatic withdrawal from Kairouan in 1887; the first occurrence of the word &#8220;Islam&#8221; as an object of study in the minutes of 17 May 1926; the choice of Tunis rather than Cairo for the founding of the House of Islamic Studies that would become PISAI; the Roberto Focca case, in which the leadership maintained a common missionary line despite methodological disagreements; then, from Vatican II onwards, the &#8220;demaghrebisation&#8221; of the approach, its opening to sub-Saharan Africa, and, during the 1980s, its expansion across Europe in response to Muslim migration.<\/p>\n<p>Rather than a linear path from conversion to dialogue, Fr. Traore describes a transformation through institutional discernment: the vocabulary changes, but the commitment of an entire Society to Muslims endures. PISAI, he concludes, is not the product of an isolated inspiration but the fruit of a century of shared decisions, in which the academic knowledge of Islam remains at the service of encounter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":34434,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"date_tournage":"","lieu":"","nature_evenement":"","vt_type":"Conf\u00e9rence","vt_yt_views":74},"video_collection":[878],"class_list":["post-34441","videos","type-videos","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","video_collection-conferences-et-colloques"],"date_tournage":"","yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>From Lavigerie to PISAI: The Institutional History of the Missionaries of Africa&#039;s Engagement with Islam - Pluriel<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/pluriel.fuce.eu\/videos\/from-lavigerie-to-pisai-the-institutional-history-of-the-missionaries-of-africas-engagement-with-islam\/?lang=en\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"From Lavigerie to PISAI: The Institutional History of the Missionaries of Africa&#039;s Engagement with Islam - Pluriel\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Delivered on 21 May 2026 at the Pontifical Institute for Arabic and Islamic Studies (PISAI) in Rome, this lecture opens the series of conferences marking the institute&#8217;s centenary (1926-2026). 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