In this presentation, Fouad Gehad Marei (Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO)), co-editor of Religion That Matters: Shiʿi Materiality Beyond Karbala (Brill, 2024) introduced and discussed the recently published edited volume. The book features twelve chapters which explore the material media — images, objects, clothes, food, incense, holy waters, spaces, and sounds — that instantiate somatic, corporeal and visceral expressions and experiences of Shiʿi Muslim devotion.
The book was presented for the first time in London and the United Kingdom. Hosted by the Aga KhanA title granted by the Shah of Persia to the then Ismaili Imam in 1818 and inherited by each of his successors to the Imamate. Centre and the Institute of Ismaili Studies.
Religion That Matters: Shiʿi Materiality Beyond Karbala
Speakers
Fouad Gehad Marei
Research Associate
Fouad Gehad Marei is a Research Associate at the Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO) in Berlin, Germany. He specializes in Middle East politics and Religious Studies and Islamic Studies, with a focus on Shiʿi Islam. He is co-editor of Religion That Matters: Shiʿi Materiality Beyond Karbala (Brill, 2024) and the editor of the special issues “God’s Influencers: How Religious Social Media Users Shape Religion and Pious Self-Fashioning” (Journal of Religion, Media and Digital Culture 13:2) and “Essays on Ethics and Methods in Shiʿi Studies” (forthcoming in the International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 57:1). Fouad earned his PhD from Durham University in the United Kingdom, and has held several academic and non-academic positions in Germany, Sweden, the United Kingdom and Turkey.
Islamic History and Thought Lecture Series
Designed to invite scholars of various international academic institutions, specialising in intellectual, social and political aspects of medieval and early modern Islamic societies, to present and discuss their research.
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Views expressed in this lecture are those of the presenting scholars, not necessarily of IIS, the Ismaili community or its leadership. Promotion of this lecture is not an explicit endorsement of the ideas presented.
