The Power of Precedence: Establishing Religious Authority in Sunnī Islam

Mira Sievers (Universität Hamburg)

 

About the lecture

How is religious authority established in Sunnī Islam? Without a single central religious institution that could make binding decisions on questions of faith and religious practice for all Muslims, different forms of religious authority have developed throughout Islamic history. Particularly important in this regard is the role of religious knowledge and those who preserve, transmit, and interpret it. But what makes this knowledge authoritative, and who is recognised as qualified to speak on its behalf?

The lecture will discuss these questions with particular attention to the role of the past in establishing religious authority. Drawing on historical examples, it will examine how references to the Qurʾān, the prophetic example, and established scholarly traditions have been used to legitimise religious authority, both through the transmission of knowledge and through appeals to historical precedents.

A particular focus will be on questions of gender. The historical participation of women in Islamic scholarly traditions, as well as contemporary debates about female religious authority, raise questions about access to religious knowledge and its interpretation. They also illustrate how references to the past can serve not only to maintain existing structures of authority but also to question them and legitimise change.

About the speaker

Mira Sievers is Professor of Islamic Theology at the University of Hamburg. Her research focuses on the Qur’an and Qur’anic exegesis, systematic theology (kalām), and Islamic ethics, with particular emphasis on gender-related and interreligious questions. In addition to her teaching and research, she serves as Managing Director of the Academy of World Religions at the University of Hamburg and President of the German Association for Islamic Theological Studies. Her most recent publications include her translation of the »Brief Treatise on the Foundations of Faith« the eleventh-century Islamic theologian Al-Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Ǧabbār (Herder, 2025) and the co-edited volume »Intertheology« (De Gruyter, 2025).

Veranstalter
Der Vortrag wird von der Frankfurter DFG-Kolleg-Forschungsgruppe »Polyzentrik und Pluralität vormoderner Christentümer« (POLY) in Kooperation mit dem Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften veranstaltet.

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