Tehseen Thaver is Assistant Professor of Religion at Princeton University. In addition to her book Beyond Sectarianism: Ambiguity, Hermeneutics, and the Formations of Religious Identity in Islam (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2024), her articles have appeared at venues such as the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, the Journal of Qur’anic Studies and the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society. 

This talk will engage some key aspects of the new recently published monograph Beyond Sectarianism (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2024) that focuses on the literary Arabic Qur’an exegesis of the highly influential yet less studied poet, historian, and exegete al-Sharif al-Radi (d. 1015). Al-Radi’s fascinating interpretations sought to resolve Qur’anic ambiguities or mutashabihat. The book argues that al-Radi’s efforts at resolving Qur’anic ambiguities were interlocked with the project of the canonization of the Arabic language. Though centered on the context of late tenth-and eleventh-century Baghdad under the Buyid dynasty, Beyond Sectarianism raises and addresses crucial questions of religious thought and identity with major ramifications for how we imagine the narrative of Islam and the place of sectarianism in it today.