Reform and Its Perils in Contemporary Islam: The Case of Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd

ACGIS Guest Lecture with Nadia Oweidat (Kansas State University)

Thursday, February 6, 2025 10:30 AM to 12:00 PM EST
Fenwick Library, Main Reading Room

Dr. Oweidat’s book identifies and analyzes one particular intellectual current that espouses an apolitical view of Islam and a separation between religion and the public sphere and the adoption of liberal values in Muslim communities. It focuses on the prominent Muslim scholar, Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd (1943-2010), whose case illustrates the resistance, even enmity, directed toward Muslim intellectuals who attempt to subject the Islamic tradition to academic scrutiny. A professor of Islamic thought in the Department of Arabic Language and Literature at Cairo University, as well as a practicing Muslim, Abu Zayd became well known in Egypt and globally when the Egyptian Court of Appeals declared him an apostate in 1995, a judgment which in mainstream interpretations of the Islamic law can carry the death penalty. To protect his own life and that of his wife, Abu Zayd fled to the Netherlands.

With Abu Zayd as a case study, the book analyzes the intellectual trends that propose a reconciliation between liberal values and Islam. It examines in depth the roadblocks and challenges to liberalizing Islamic thought, both externally in the form of oppressive regimes and an intolerant religious arena, as well as internally at the level of intellectual arguments. A critical analysis of the logic of liberal Islamic thought has been a missing element in current academic study.

Dr. Oweidat is an academic specializing in the religions, cultures, and politics of the Middle East and North Africa. An intellectual historian, she serves as an Assistant Professor at Kansas State University. Dr. Oweidat was a 2021-22 Fellow at the Wilson Center. and holds a D.Phil. in Oriental Studies from the University of Oxford (2014), M.A. in International Studies from the University of Wyoming, and a B.A. in English Literature from the University of Jordan.