Debating Issues of War and Peace in the Islamic Tradition
| Dates: | 24 March 2026 |
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| Times: | 17:00 - 17:00 |
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| What is it: | Seminar |
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| Organiser: | School of Arts, Languages and Cultures |
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| Who is it for: | University staff, Adults, Alumni, Current University students, General public |
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Professor Asma Afsaruddin, Indiana University (online)
Host: Dr Tom Woerner-Powell
Abstract: War and peace are universal themes in which Muslim scholars throughout history have taken great interest. The term jihad and its derivatives have a great bearing on understanding the concepts of war and peace in Islam and remains one of the most contested topics within Islamic Studies among a wide range of scholars, as well as in non-academic policymaking circles and in the media. This lecture will focus on how jihad and related concepts are treated in the Qur’an and Qur’an commentaries, hadith, legal and mystical texts, from both the pre-modern and modern periods and contextualize the variety of discourses that have developed throughout history. More recently in the modern period, a number of Muslim scholars and activists have been highlighting peacemaking and non-violent resistance to wrongdoing as the most important components of jihad as an ethical and moral precept, which will receive due attention.
Bio: Asma Afsaruddin is Class of 1950 Herman B. Wells Endowed Professor and Professor of Islamic Studies in the Department of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures at Indiana University, Bloomington. She received her PhD in Arabic and Islamic Studies from Johns Hopkins University and previously taught at Harvard and Notre Dame universities. She is the author and editor of nine books, including Jihad: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford University Press, 2021); Contemporary Issues in Islam (Edinburgh University Press, 2015); Striving in the Path of God: Jihad and Martyrdom in Islamic Thought (Oxford University Press, 2013), which has been translated into Indonesian and won the World Book Award in Islamic Studies from the Iranian government (2015) and was a runner-up for the British-Kuwaiti Friendship Society Book award (2014); and The First Muslims: History and Memory (OneWorld Publications 2008), which has been translated into Turkish, Malay, and Bosnian. She has also published over eighty research articles and book chapters on topics as diverse as Qur’anic hermeneutics, hadith studies, inter-faith relations, war and peace in the Islamic tradition; Islamic feminisms, and modern reform movements in Muslim-majority societies. Professor Afsaruddin’s research has been supported by grants from the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation of New York which named her a Carnegie Scholar in 2005. In 2019 she was inducted into the Johns Hopkins Society of Scholars in recognition of her academic and professional accomplishments.
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