Concepts have long lost their innocence, not least due to post-modern and post-colonial critique. In the heydays of modernity, researchers tended to presume the universalism of key analytical concepts: every society was thought to have some form of state, some version of religion, art, literature, or science. All of those supposedly universal concepts have been…

“Islamophobia and the Muslim question: historical questions, contemporary representations” In contemporary public debates, Islam is often associated with issues such as violence, women’s oppression or antisemitism. One can, of course, criticise such stereotypes as failing to do justice to the depth and diversity of Islam. Yet, from an academic point of view, a more interesting…

This Winter School revolves on the theme of “commensality”, the prospect of coming together at the same table -or not-, with literal and metaphorical implications for respecting differences among those who share a meal.  As a field of growing research in the arena of public health, scholars now connect commensality and sociability to individual and communal well-being. In this Winter School, we propose…

On Wednesday November 12 at 5 pm Ahmed El Shamsy (University of Chicago) will give the 2025 Juynboll lecture entitled “Sunni constitutional theory in light of an early hadith about obedience.”  The lecture takes place at Leiden University in Lipsius 005. In this lecture El Shamsy shows that the claim that Sunnism is politically quietist,…