Systematic investigations into religious precepts, worldly rules of law and legal practices in the Muslim world show clearly how these societies deal with justice and injustice. Sharia, the Islamic ‘legal system’, plays an important role in this context.

A Biography of Sayyid ʿUthman (1822–1914)

What forms does Muslim religiosity take in daily life? What is the relation between representations of Islam and Muslims by scholars and the views that exist in the ‘real world’?

University Lecturer Ahab Bdaiwi:

On 13 December 2023 Alf Farabi successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

Islam exists in global history with its richly variegated cultural and social realities. When these specific cultural contexts are marginalized, Islam is reduced to an ahistorical religion without the ability to contribute to humanity. This limited understanding of Islam has been a contributing factor…

Thanks to its early civilisation and continuous mix of influences, the Muslim world has a rich and varied culture. The study of material culture, books, stories, films and increasingly television series teaches us about the structure of modern-day Muslim societies.

From the formative period of Islam to the contemporary world, Muslims have negotiated changing modalities of being Muslim.

This NWO project, which is being be carried out in close cooperation with the universities of Oxford (contact: Prof. Robert Hoyland) and Princeton (contact: Prof. John F. Haldon) and the UMR 8167 (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, CNRS, University Paris-Sorbonne, Paris IV, University Panthéon-Sorbonne,…

From the 3rd until the 8th of December, together with Dr Amr Ryad of Utrecht University our institute organized a workshop with students of the Faculty of Languages and Translation of the Azhar University. During this workshop, students had the opportunity to discuss their own research proposals with…

What made the early Islamic empire so successful and have we missed the story by neglecting crucial evidence? The 7th-century Arab conquests changed the socio-political configurations in the Mediterranean and Eurasia forever. Yet we do not really know how the Arabs managed to gain dominance of this…

By examining the impact of Islam on the daily life of those living under its rule, the goal of this project is to understand the striking newness of Islamic society and its debt to the diverse cultures it superseded. Questions will be the extent, character, and ambition of Muslim state competency at…

Political Islam is not new to the Middle East, but the appearance of ISIS has stretched the phenomenon to the extreme.

The |0100| Project studies the discourses, practices and imaginaries of Islamic information society’s most debated component- Artificial Intelligence- using multimodal and mixed methods and comparing and contrasting narratives and imagery of AI-religious-futures in Muslim Southeast Asia.

The |0100| Project studies the discourses, practices and imaginaries of Islamic information society’s most debated component- Artificial Intelligence- using multimodal and mixed methods and comparing and contrasting narratives and imagery of AI-religious-futures in Muslim Southeast Asia.

On Thursday 10 April 2025 Wahyu Widodo successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

Authority and Control in the Countryside looks at the economic, religious, political and cultural instruments that local and regional powers in the late antique to early medieval Mediterranean and Near East used to manage their rural hinterlands.

The aim of Leiden Islam Academy is to share the broad knowledge of Islam existing in Leiden University with various parties within society, and to bring people together. After three years of preparation, the launch meeting will take place on 7 December.

This programme examines cultural space, national identity and the politics of tangible and intangible heritage in Islamic Central Asia.

In recent years, and especially since the ‘Arab Spring’ of 2011, a growing body of research, media reporting, and scholarly literature has focused on the role of ‘Arab youth’ as the drivers of social and political movements across the Middle East and North Africa.

A platform to research memory and culture in the Muslim world. This programme explores the ways modern memory studies methodologies can be applied to pre-modern Muslim societies to reveal the uses of the past and senses of tradition in diverse contexts of Muslim thought.

A First Overview

This study focuses on increasing our understanding of the different pathways converts take during conversion to Islam.

On 12 January 2023 ms. Nor Ismah successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

Conference, Workshop

On February 20th, Gulnaz Sibgatullina succesfully defended her doctoral thesis and graduated. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Gulnaz on this great result.

This book presents the results of a research about the Islamic courts of Cianjur in West Java, and Bulukumba in South Sulawesi and the role they play in local divorce practices.

‘Islam in de klas’ is a new course targeting primary school teachers to go online on 18 March by the Leiden Islam Academy (LIA). The online course aims to help teachers get better equipped when dealing with Islam-related dilemmas in primary classrooms.

Mr. S. Al Daghistani defended his thesis on 30 November 2017

In recent decades, a more radical Islam has been on the rise in Indonesia, but the government now promotes a moderate form of Islam. In his inaugural lecture, Professor Nico Kaptein will analyse the dynamics of Islam and the influence of the Middle East in this the largest Muslim country in the world.…

What does the excavated material tell us about the continuation and/or change of urban life during the transitional phrases from Antiquity to the Middle Ages on Crete and in the eastern Mediterranean more generally?

A number of different course curricula were presented at a training conference on ‘Islam in the Class’ op 17 November. The course materials were developed by Leiden academics in collaboration with teachers involved in pre-university education.

Are you a teacher (history, social studies, religion, philosophy, geography, etc.) and do you have questions about the relationship between citizenship and Islam? Consider joining NIMAR's study trip to Morocco.

Situated at the crossroads of the Indian and Pacific Oceans, the Spanish Philippines offer historians an intriguing middle ground of connected histories that raises fundamental new questions about conventional ethnic, regional and religious identities.

Abdessamad El Amraoui defended his thesis on 6 Mai 2015.

What role do the Islamic courts play in protecting women’s divorce rights? How do they perform with regard to spousal support, child support and marital property? Stijn van Huis defends his PhD thesis on September 8, 2015

Professor Maurits Berger is presenting an online course, starting on 6 November, on the images that Islam and the West hold of one another. The course will be useful for diplomats from Teheran to Islamabad.

Shiʿi Islam

Why is Arabic poetry relevant for our understanding of the Arabic-speaking world? Arabist James Montgomery explains this in the first video interview of the Leiden | Islam interview series produced by Leiden Islam Centre LUCIS. 'If there is anything which is going to make the situation worse, it is…