Arnold Mol is a Lecturer in Islamic Studies and Arabic Philosophy at the Institute for Philosophy. My research revolves mainly around Islamic studies, and broad subjects surrounding the humanities and scholastics i.e., theology, philosophy, intellectual history, philosophy of religions and worldviews, religious studies, hermeneutics, and ethics and human rights discourse.

More information about Arnold Mol

Research

My research revolves mainly around Islamic studies, and broad subjects surrounding the humanities and scholastics i.e., theology, philosophy, intellectual history, philosophy of religions and worldviews, religious studies, hermeneutics, and ethics and human rights discourse.

• Islamic intellectual history, Islamic humanities, Islamic theology and philosophy (ʿilm al-kalām/falsafa/ḥikma), Ḥanafī-Māturīdī theology, Ottoman thought
• Islamic hermeneutics, Islamic exegetical history (tafsīr studies), Qurʾānic studies, ḥadith studies
• Islamic ethics, Islamic ethical literature (akhlāq/adāb), Islam and human rights discourse, Islamic jurisprudence and philosophy of law (uṣūl al-fiqh), Islam and political thought, Islamic political theology, Islamic international law (siyar)
• Islamic comparative religion (firqa/milal), Muslim concepts of the Other, Islam and non-Muslim minorities (aḥkām al-dhimma, millet system), Sunnī-Shīʿī engagements
• Islamic studies, Islam in the West, Muslim minorities, Islamic contemporary thought, Islamic reformism and modernism, Islamic fundamentalism and (anti-)extremism 
• Religious studies, comparative religion, religion in Late Antiquity and Middle Ages, conversion theory, religion and secularism, religion and science, religion and psychology
• Comparative theology, theological anthropology, theology of care, Christian theology
• Medieval philosophy, Arabic philosophy, Christian philosophy, Thomism, scholasticism
• Philosophy of religions and worldviews, global philosophy of religion, philosophy of action, ethics of belief, theodicy, the concept of evil, hermeneutics, epistemology, metaphysics
• Comparative ethics, metaethics, moral philosophy, moral psychology, religious ethics, religion and human rights discourse
• Political religion, otherization and dehumanization, religion and violence, beliefs and extremism, fundamentalism and totalitarianism, terrorism and radicalization studies.

Supervisors: Prof. dr. A.F. de Jong en Dr. A. Bdaiwi

CV

Arnold (Yasin) Mol is PhD Fellow and Lecturer in Islamic Studies and Arabic Philosophy at the Leiden University Institute for Philosophy, and PhD Researcher in Islamic Intellectual History at the Leiden University Center for the Study of Religion (LUCSoR). He is a member of the Leiden University Shiʿi Studies Initiative (LUSSI). He is also Lecturer in Comparative Theology and Philosophy of Religion at the Islamic University of Applied Sciences Rotterdam (IUASR), and Senior Research Consultant at the Landelijk Steunpunt Extremisme (LSE, Dutch National Center for Extremism).

He has multiple publications on the subjects of Islamic intellectual history, Islamic theology, tafsīr studies, ḥadīth studies, Islamic ethics, Islam and human rights, and Islamic reformism and extremism (including Brill, Oxford University Press, Routledge, De Gruyter, ABC-Clio, Journal of Islamic Ethics, Journal of Islamic Law and Society, Al-Bayan Journal of Quran and Hadith Studies, Journal of Shi’a Islamic Studies, Al-Burhan Journal of Quran and Sunnah Studies), and has provided talks, consultations, and lectures at multiple (non-)governmental organizations, international institutes and conferences (including Osnabrück University, Freiburg University, Georgetown University, Oxford University, ISAR Istanbul, BBSI, Oxford University, CIET, UQSIA, Dutch Theological Society)

Teaching activities

I teach at the Institute for Philosophy in subjects surrounding Islamic thought, Arabic philosophy, and philosophy of religions and worldviews, including the courses Islamic Thought: Past and Present and Comparative Philosophy II: Topics.

Publications

• ‘A Typology of (Anti-)Extremists Worldviews: Mapping Ideological Orientations’ (forthcoming). article in journal
• ‘Human Rights’, in Routledge Handbook on Islamic Ethics, Ed. Mohammed Ghaly (New York: Routledge) (forthcoming). book chapter
• ‘The encyclopedic hermeneutics of Ibn ʿĀdil al-Ḥanbalī (d. 775/1374) in his exegetical summa al-Lubāb fī ʿulūm al-kitāb’, in Handbook of Qurʾānic Hermeneutics, Ed. George Tamer (Berlin: De Gruyter) (forthcoming). book chapter
• ‘Hermeneutical Aspects in Ḥāšiya and Supercommentary tradition’, in Handbook of Qurʾānic Hermeneutics, Ed. George Tamer (Berlin: De Gruyter) (forthcoming). book chapter
• ‘‘Evil cannot be related to You’: Kemālpāshazāde’s treatise on theodicy’, Journal for Islamic Law and Society, (forthcoming). article in journal
• ‘Human Rights and Islamic Reform’, in Oxford Handbook on Islamic Reform, Ed. Emad Hamdeh and Natana DeLong-Bas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022) (forthcoming). book chapter
• ‘Islamic Human Rights Discourse and Hermeneutics of Continuity’, Journal of Islamic Ethics (JIE), Volume 3 (2019). article in journal
• ‘Divine respite in the Ottoman tafsīr tradition: Reconciling exegetical approaches to Q.11:117’ in Osmanli’da ilm-I Tefsir, Ed. T. Boyalik and H. Abaci (Istanbul: ISAR, 2019). book chapter
• ‘Modern and Classical Scientific Readings of the Qur’ān: A comparative study of Abdul Wadud (d. 2001) and al-Bayḍāwī (d. 1286)'s naturalistic exegesis’, Al-Burhān Journal of Qurʾān and Sunnah Studies, Volume 3 (2019). article in journal
• ‘Laylat al-Qadr as Sacred Time: Sacred Cosmology in Sunni Kalām and Tafsīr’ in Islamic Studies Today: Essays in Honor of Andrew Rippin, Ed. Majid Daneshgar and Walid Saleh (Leiden: Brill, 2017). book chapter
• ‘Rise of Islamism, Extremism, and Islamic Counter Responses’, in Great Events in Religion: An Encyclopedia of Pivotal Events in Religious History, Ed. Florin Curta and Andrew Holt (Santa Barbara: ABC-Clio, 2016). encyclopedia entry
• ‘Origins of Jihad’, in Great Events in Religion: An Encyclopedia of Pivotal Events in Religious History, Ed. Florin Curta and Andrew Holt (Santa Barbara: ABC-Clio, 2016). encyclopedia entry
• ‘Ashura in the Malay Indonesian World The Ten Days of Muharram in Sumatra as Depicted by 19th Dutch Scholars’, Journal of Shi‘a Islamic Studies, Volume VIII, No. 4 (2015). article in journal
• ‘The denial of supernatural sorcery in classical and modern Sunni tafsir of surah al-Falaq: A reflection on underlying constructions’, Al-Bayan journal of Quran and Hadith studies, Volume 11, (June 2013). article in journal

Publications