Da'wa: A Global History (Matthew Kuiper)

On 25 September 2024, Livres & MAM hosted Matthew KUIPER (Hope College) to discuss his book "Da’wa. A Global History of Islamic Missionary Thought and Practice" (Edinburgh University Press, 2021). He was interviewed by Karène Sanchez-Summerer (University of Groningen) as part of the ANR Predicmo research program. In this engaging study, Matthew J. Kuiper tells the fascinating story of how Islam became a world religion and cultural phenomenon of immense scale, astonishing diversity and global impact. His starting point is the dramatic upsurge in Islamic missionary activism and widespread Muslim recovery of the classical concept of da‘wa (‘inviting’ to Islam, or Islamic mission) in recent times. Going back to Islam’s origins, Kuiper then carefully chronicles 14 centuries of history, from the 7th-century da‘was of the Qur’an and the Prophet Muhammad to diverse da‘wa initiatives in today’s global religious marketplaces. Paying attention to changing contexts, and to themes like the interplay between the religious and the political, Islamic relations with other religions, and the transformations of modernity, he develops a nuanced and original portrait of the past, present and future of Islamic missionary thought and practice. Dr. Matthew Kuiper is the Evert J. and Hattie E. Blekkink Associate Professor of Religion at Hope College (Holland, Michigan). Before joining Hope’s religion faculty, he served as a professor of religious studies at Missouri State University. He previously published "Da'wa and Other Religions. Indian Muslims and the Modern Resurgence of Global Islamic Activism" (Routledge, 2017). He lived in South Asia for many years, and has traveled throughout the Muslim World. Livres & MAM is a series of interviews organized by IREMAM and the MMSH Media library with authors of recent academic books on the Arab and Muslim worlds. The sessions can be viewed on IREMAM's YouTube channel and listened to as podcasts on Spotify and the main platforms (Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Pocket Casts, Radio Public and soon others). Design and production: Thomas Pierret