This book offers a new direction for the study of contemporary Islam by focusing on what being Muslim means in people’s everyday lives.

Thirteen Centuries of Creed, Conflict and Coexistence

How does the religious identity of islamic primary schools in the Netherlands relate to the social demands?

This project explores how Muslim authorities and writers use Russian to transmit Islamic contents, and whether this leads to a specific "Islamic sociolect" of the Russian language.

The FOI project has a number of topics it aims to investigate. These are: State, Economy, Culture and Papyri. You will find links to bibliographies on this page.

On young Muslims seeking to understand their place and make their way in a transformed world.

Research on the morality of life insurance. What issues are raised when insurance companies define responsibility and solidarity? Has insurance changed since the crisis of 2007?

Anthropology of Law in Muslim Sudan analyses the hybridity of law systems and the plurality of legal practices in rural and urban contexts of contemporary Sudan, shedding light on the complex relation between Islam and society.

LUCIS promotes high-quality research on Islam and Muslim societies and actively communicates the insights and findings of that research to the larger public.

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goal of this project is to understand the striking newness of Islamic society and its debt to the diverse cultures it superseded.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…

Knowledge of Muslim societies is essential to function in a globalised world and to fully understand our own Dutch society. Leiden researchers explore the languages, cultures, religions, legal systems and history of Muslim societies and in this way contribute to a centuries-old tradition.

Can we speak of a single Islamic discourse in fields like politics, militancy, economics, sustainable development, and the like, and what interaction does this Islamic though have with ‘Western’ thought?

Social and Behavioural Sciences, Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology

Reconfigurations of Practice, Community and Authority in Contemporary Aceh

This programme starts from the idea that cultural discourse is one of the main engines of intellectual history and the history of ideas.

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

With Brill, LUCIS publishes a peer-reviewed book series, “Leiden Studies in Islam and Society” (LSIS), aimed at an international academic audience.

The Indonesian Experience after the Fall of Suharto

Islam is often studied as a distinct and uniform phenomenon that is or should be kept private, and stands apart from any other human activity, be it in the field of economics, law or politics.

Policymakers and Academics Speaking with Each Other

As Lila Abu Lughod pointed out in 1989, North Africa has been one of the geographical ‘zones of prestige’ for the development of canonical approaches and crucial theoretical debates regarding the comparative study of Islam.

Khadija Kadrouch-Outmany defended her thesis on 16 September 2014.

The Leiden | Islam interview series contains short documentary-style videos including interview flashes with leading scholars in the field of Islam and Muslim societies. With this series, LUCIS aims to show the value of unconventional insights related to Islam and Muslim societies, and to relate them…

The Leiden Islam Blog offers a platform for scholars and publicists from Leiden and beyond to share their research and opinions with a broad audience.

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

In Women and Property Rights in Indonesian Islamic Contexts, eight scholars of Indonesian Islam examine women’s access to property in law courts and in village settings.

Understanding the history of Islam and Muslim societies sheds a clear light on the complex and changing social structures of the Middle East, including the current trouble spots whose effect spreads all the way to Western Europe.

Muslim scholars work in a long and rich tradition of knowledge-production in their own culture.

Lecture, LUCIS What's New?! Series

The Issues beneath the Surface

With Leiden University Press, LUCIS publishes a peer-reviewed book series “Debates on Islam and Society” aimed at a broad audience. All books in this series are available in open access.

Studies on the Ottoman Jihad on the Centenary of Snouck Hurgronje's "Holy War Made in Germany"

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…

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

LUCIS affiliated members are researchers outside Leiden University who are actively involved in the study of Islam and/or Muslim societies and who regularly participate in LUCIS activities. LUCIS affiliate membership offers possibilities to cooperate with LUCIS as well as network opportunities. Contact…

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.

This dissertation aims to establish a dialogue between ethnomusicology (more specifically indigenous organology), the anthropology of art and the culture of the Apinaye peoples, in order to understand how the musical objects of these peoples are learned and taught, and thus to understand its musical…

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,…

A Biography of Sayyid ʿUthman (1822–1914)

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.

How have Muslims imagined the world before Muhammad? Stories about pre-Islamic times feature across all genres and periods of Arabic literature, and while many writers have derided the pre-Islamic past as disorderly paganism, others celebrate its memory as a time of Arab nobility and fine literature.…

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’?

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

Islam can be a difficult or sensitive subject to discuss with pupils, regardless whether they are Muslim. Fourteen secondary-school teachers and university lecturers went on a fact-finding trip to Morocco accompanied by experts from NIMAR (the Netherlands Institute in Morocco). What did they learn from…

This research programme seeks to understand the dynamics in the relationship between social media, mobile telephony and the social fabric under duress in Africa's mobile margins. It combines studies on mobility/migration, conflict and communication in an attempt to uncover these new dynamics, which…

Jochem van den Boogert defended his thesis on 18 November 2015

The Institute organises Arabic courses for universities, but also for companies, international organisations and individuals.