Join us to hear from Dr. Bruce B. Lawrence, Professor of Islamic Studies Emeritus at Duke University and adjunct Professor at Alliance of Civilizations Institute, Ibn Haldun University, Istanbul.

Allah merits more than faithful acceptance or hostile rejection. Neither theological nor ideological, advancing neither apologetic nor polemical agendas, Dr. Lawrence approaches the name/the subject of Allah as a perspectivist.

A perspective exploration must be at once fair minded, openended and expansive. Dr. Lawrence will examine literary and historical sources, including Jack Miles, God in the Qur’an (2018) as well as his own most recent books, Who is Allah? (2015) and The Koran in English: A Biography (2017), but he will also foreground the contribution of visual artists, such as M.F. Husain, Arahmaiani and Sandow Birk.

About the Speaker

Bruce B. Lawrence is Professor of Islamic Studies Emeritus at Duke University and adjunct Professor at Alliance of Civilizations Institute, Ibn Haldun University, Istanbul.  His research interests include: Contemporary Islam as Religious Ideology; South Asian Sufism; Islamicate Cosmopolitanism; the Multiple Roles and Uses of the Qur’an. Among his monographs are: The Koran in English – A Biography (Princeton University Press, 2017), Who is Allah? (University of North Carolina Press, 2015), The Qur’an – a Biography (Grove/Atlantic, 2006);  and Sufi Martyrs of Love (with Carl Ernst; Palgrave Macmillan, 2002). He is also working with Professor Rafey Habib on a multi-year project, The Qur’an – A Verse Translation, forthcoming from WW Norton in 2021.