OIB_upclose, the OIBlog from Beirut and Cairo, features an exclusive publication of Prof. Dr. Angelika Neuwirth’s honorary lecture on the occasion of migrating her monumental research project Corpus Coranicum from the Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften (BBAW) where it has been housed and funded since 2007, to the Zentrum für Islamische Theologie (ZIT) at the University of Münster (Westf.). Prof. Neuwirth was director of the OIB from 1994 to 1999, a time that is remembered at the institute as ‘the years of splendor’. In this remarkable German lecture, entitled “Philologie, Theologie und Politik: Ein moderner Korankommentar im Kontext,” Neuwirth succinctly combines lessons of late Antiquity, viz the virtues of the Quran and its exegeses, with the scholarly imperative to recognize and account for the present political forcefield in which we conduct our research.  It is as if she is challenging her audience to consider the unspoken question: What ought the study of Islam and Arabic do during Gaza? Or, to paraphrase Adorno, can there be Middle East studies in Germany after Gaza?

Link:
https://oib.hypotheses.org/1666



From left to right: Dirk Hartwig, Prof. Dr. Ines Weinrich, Prof. Dr. Mouhanad Khorchide, Prof. Dr. Dr. h. c. mult. Angelika Neuwirth, Prof. Dr. Dr. Felix Körner SJ, Prof. Dr. Michael Quante, © ZIT/Michael C. Möller, Universität Münster