“The Cornucopia of Environmental Islamic Studies” 

Abstract:
This lecture is the first lecture in the Environmental Cluster in the scope of the “OIB-COSIMENA Research Colloquium on New Islamic Ethics in the Present and the Future”. The Colloquium is a series of intercultural and interreligious lectures in Cooperation with the Orient Institut Beirut (OIB) on Gender Ethics, Environmental Ethics and Biomedical Ethics.
 

The lecture will deal with the following perspective:
To start with, this talk takes a look at the state of the art in wider environmental Islamic Studies and at the variety of its approaches. Despite the already advanced stage of certain green discourses concerning Muslim societies and cultures, Krawietz pleads for more emphasis beyond mere intellectual history. Her main topic will be on the interface between consumer culture, urban settings, and material culture. Such recent developments should not be left to geographers and the like but provide an invitation to a reinvented and significantly enlarged Islamic Studies in synch with globally informed Area Studies. Instead of automatically first seeking refuge in the holy sources of Islam, Krawietz proposes to step back and look at some current global environments. Such a trajectory may help to widen the Islamic ethical horizon and ensuing research agendas.

The event is organized in cooperation with the Orient Institut Beirut (OIB) within the framework of the DAAD project “Clusters of Scientific Innovation in the Middle East and North Africa” (COSIMENA), which is a platform that aims to strengthen and initiate scientific cooperation and networks between researchers and universities in Germany and the MENA region. As a result, existing cooperation is made visible and potential synergies are initiated.


Bio:
Prof. Dr. Birgit Krawietz is a Professor of Islamic Studies at Freie Universität Berlin, Germany and functions as a PhD supervisor at the Berlin Graduate School Muslim Cultures and Societies. She obtained her PhD from Freiburg University with a study on Arabic fatwas of the twentieth century on medical issues and cosmetic forms of manipulating the human body. She has worked on Islamic normativity, the history of culture, and practices of consumption. Krawietz conducted research about cultural heritage in the Arab Gulf region and in Turkey, notably the city of Edirne. After focusing on medical ethics and afterwards sports (foremostly oil wrestling) she has more recently turned to debates about nature and greening. She is currently coediting the volume The Routledge Handbook of Global Islam and Consumer Culture.

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