Call for Papers for MIDEO 38 (2023)

Submission Deadline: June 30, 2021 (the publication is scheduled for January 2023)

Thematic issue edited by: Abdessamad Belhaj (Catholic University of Louvain, CISMOC) and Haoues Seniguer (Sciences-Po Lyon, Triangle UMR 5206, Lyon)

The Covid-19 (kūfīd-19) pandemic broke out around October-November 2019 in China. In addition to having become a global public health problem, it quickly became “a total social fact” (Mauss, 2013). It has effectively set in motion a plurality of institutions and social fields (economic, political, cultural and religious), within both national and international milieus.

The epidemic (wabāʾ) has thus generated its share of comments and religious glosses by prominent religious figures. For example, the Moroccan theologian Aḥmad al-Raysūnī, president of the International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS), stated with regard to the Covid-19 pandemic (ǧāʾiḥat kūrūnā), that it belongs to “the tradition of trial/affliction” (sunnat al-ibtilāʾ),[1] so that both “believer and reasonable men” will further question how to “benefit” from this “trial” (yastafīdu min al-balāʾ), or “lessons” (al-ʿibar wa-l-durūs), from a spiritual and existential point of view so that, in the end, according to him, people can meditate on “their way of life and behaviour” (uslūb ḥayātihim wa-sulūkihim).

Also, in view of the acuteness of this Islamic theology of catastrophes that has (re)deployed itself recently, especially in the predominantly Muslim world, some questions on continuities and discontinuities in the theological discourse remain to be questioned and further investigated.

It is to the major questions, among other possible ones, that this thematic issue of MIDEO is devoted: the Islamic theology of catastrophes at different periods of history, in ancient, modern and contemporary theological thought.

More information on: www.ideo-cairo.org