On October 13 and 14 we will have a two-day international conference with many inspiring speakers. Islam is shaped by a solid intellectual tradition in which various debates and discussions have been conducted about doctrinal concepts, the nature of the Sharīʿa, and its applicability to society, the concepts of belief (īmān) and unbelief (kufr), thorny…

On September 9th 2022 the individual members of the ERC Beyond Sharia team presented their research projects, followed by a discussion. It was an inspiring afternoon!

We had an inspiring Rumi day filled with wonderful lectures in which several aspect of Rumi’s religious philosophy were discussed, ranging from piety, didacticism, his views on senses, bacchanalia, his reception in modern times, his musicality, and several other topics. The prominent translator of Rumi, Professor Alan Williams (Manchester University) opened the meeting by focusing…

(lecture in Dutch by Asghar Seyed-Gohrab at the launch of the Dutch scholarly journal ZemZem: Tijdschrift over het Midden-Oosten, Noord-Afrika en islam). During this lecture, Asghar Seyed-Gohrab discussed the question of why Hafez has been continuously popular in the Persian cultural area for more than six hundred years. What makes his poems as emblems of…

‘The Shāh-Nāme: A Treasury for Persian Heroic Traditions’ (lecture by Dr M.J. Yahaghi) The ERC team Beyond Sharia had an informative and enlightening meeting with Dr Mohammad-Jaʿfar Yahaghi of Ferdowsi University in Mashhad last Monday 11 April 2022. After his inspiring lecture in Persian entitled The Shāh-Nāme: A Treasury for Persian Heroic Traditions, we discussed…

Asghar Seyed-Gohrab gave a lecture on Rumi on March 10 2022 at TU Delft Library. The famous Persian poet Rumi (d. 1273) has inspired both Muslims and non-Muslims over the world with his mystical poems and his “religion of love”. In this lecture, Asghar Seyed-Gohrab explored how Rumi has been able to inspire so many…