Is Tunisia a Secular State?  Islam in the 2014 Tunisian Constitution

Please join us for a fascinating presentation on contemporary Tunisia with guest speaker, Professor Malika Zeghal of Harvard University. Malika Zeghal is a political scientist who studies religion through the lens of Islam and power. She is particularly interested in Islamist movements and in the institutionalization of Islam in the Muslim world, with special focus on the Middle East and North Africa in the post-colonial period and on Muslim diasporas in North America and Western Europe. She has more general interests in the circulation and role of religious ideologies in situations of conflict and/or dialogue. She has published a study of central religious institutions in Egypt (Gardiens de l’Islam. Les oulémas d’al-Azhar dans l’Egypte contemporaine [Presses de Sciences Po, 1996]), and a volume on Islam and politics in Morocco (Islamism in Morocco: Religion, Authoritarianism, and Electoral Politics [Markus Wiener, 2008]), which won the French Voices-Pen American Center Award. She has recently edited a special issue of the Revue des Mondes Musulmans et de la Méditerranée, Intellectuels de l’islam contemporain. Nouvelles générations, nouveaux débats [2008], on new intellectual debates in contemporary Islam. She is currently working on a book on states, secularity, and Islam in the contemporary Arab world, forthcoming from Princeton University Press.

Co-hosted with the Emile Bustani Middle East Seminar.