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January 2020
Luce Workshop – Media and “Public” Islam in African
This workshop attends to the processes by which religion is made public by/through media in Africa. In Africa certain “old” media (e.g., print and radio) remain very important for religious expression. However, the recent media revolution and technological advancement in the wake of media deregulation with a broadened range of media forms, including new media has opened up unprecedented opportunities for religious publicity. At the same time, it has also created spaces where new actors – preachers, activists, ordinary Muslims…
Find out more »February 2020
Culture and Conflict in Palestine/Israel
As diplomatic and military efforts to establish justice and peace in Palestine/Israel have reached a stalemate, we call for a closer look into the cultural sphere – not as a form of escapism but rather as a sphere that might generate potential transformative energies and affect other spheres. The conference brings together scholars of Israel/Palestine from diverse disciplines (including anthropology, architecture, history, literature, sociology, and political science) who share the view that the cultural sphere is a contested terrain, where…
Find out more »February 2022
The State and the Social Life of Islam in Indonesia – Dr. Ismail F. Alatas
REGISTER NOW Relationships between the state and organized religion are commonly explained in secular political terms, whether as politicization or co-optation of religion. Both explanatory paradigms presuppose rigid distinctions between the political and the religious, and between state and society, thereby foreclosing explorations into the polyvalent character of the state and religion as reproduced in and through multiple social domains. Observing the fluctuating relationship between an Islamic community leader and different state actors in contemporary Indonesia, this talk proposes the notion of articulation to think about…
Find out more »April 2022
Social Activism and Anti-Blasphemy Laws in Mauritania: the Mkhaitir Affair (2014-19)
The court case of Mohamed Mkhaitir, imprisoned in January 2014 and released in July 2019, caused considerable controversy in Mauritania and abroad. After a Facebook post critiquing the stratified social order among Mauritania’s Hassaniyya Arabic speakers that used examples from Islamic history, Mkhaitir was accused of apostasy and sentenced to death. This presentation focuses on the Mauritanian state’s efforts to reconcile its commitment to democratic values (central to its relations with key Western partners) and a complex sociopolitical hermeneutics based…
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