The network “Philosophy in the Islamic Modern World” and the colloquium “Philosophy in the MENA Region” is organising a public online panel session (in German) on the protest movement in Iran on Tue 22 Nov 2022 (6-8pm). Since mid-September 2022, people in Iran are protesting for a life in dignity and freedom. Women play a leading role in the protest movement, which is why it is already labelled a feminist revolution. Under the slogan “Women, Life, Freedom” (zan, zendegī, āzādī), the protests have developed an unexpected dynamic that has already brought about profound social changes. Which conceptual and historical perspectives are helpful to understand the emergence and development of the current events.? How can the unbroken will of the movement be explained, what is the significance of the pioneering roles of women and young people, what holds this movement together and how can its global political dimension be conceptually reflected? This and other questions will be addressed on the panel in input lectures and subsequent discussion.

The network organised two thematic panels on philosophy in the Islamic world of modernity at the “Deutscher Orientalistentag”, which took place at Freie Universität Berlin from 12 to 17 September 2022. The first panel, “Exploring a Field of Research”, presented perspectives and goals of the network in the field of tension between academic disciplines and concepts of philosophy. The second panel, “Revisiting Arab Formations of the Secular and Secularism”, discussed approaches for a reassessment of the manifestations of the secular in the Arab world with a view to their complex interconnections with Western modernity, the (after)effects of the colonial legacy and intellectual traditions of the Arab-Islamic history of ideas.

The lecture series “Philosophising in the Islamic Modern World” presents aspects of philosophical discourses from different Middle Eastern language areas on the basis of debates on critique, secularity, speculative realism and modernity in a systematic and intercultural perspective. In four panels, the international guests will address various philosophical thematic fields in an interdisciplinary and intercultural way and explore the possibility of global philosophising.