CGIS: Beyond Sectarianism: Ambiguity, Hermeneutics, and Formations of Religious Identity in Early Islam with Tehseen Thaver

In her new book, Beyond Sectarianism, Tehseen Thaver offers a fundamental reevaluation of how one should think about the relationship between the Qur’an, Shi‘ism, and religious identity. This book focuses on the literary Arabic Qur’an exegesis of the highly influential yet less studied poet, historian, and exegete al-Sharif al-Radi (d. 1015). Al-Radi’s fascinating interpretations sought to resolve Qur’anic ambiguities or mutashabihat. Thaver argues that al-Radi’s efforts at resolving Qur’anic ambiguities were interlocked with the project of the canonization of the Arabic language, and shows that although he was marked as a Shi‘i scholar, the interpretive and political horizons that informed his scholarly endeavors could not be reduced to predetermined templates of sectarian identity. Tehseen Thaver is Assistant Professor of Religion at Princeton University. Her research focuses on multiple forms of Muslims’ engagement with scripture – pre-modern and modern, oral and textual, interpretive and performative. She is the author of the book Beyond Sectarianism: Ambiguity, Hermeneutics, and the Formations of Religious Identity in Islam published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in 2024. She has also published various articles in journals such as Journal of Qur’anic Studies, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Studies, and the Journal of the American Academy of Religion. Presented by the Center for Global Islamic Studies (CGIS).