We are always delighted to announce the release of our Institute’ journal, MIDÉO. This year’s volume is devoted to a topic as fascinating as it is urgent, particularly given its profound relevance to the current Middle Eastern landscape, where war wounds and kills innocent people with horror and savagery. The fruit of the study days held at IDEO in May 2023, this volume brings together contributions from international scholars exploring how the Qurʾān and its commentaries have perceived the “Religious Other”. Jews, Christians, and polytheists—figures who appear at times as partners, witnesses to an earlier revelation, or doctrinal opponents. Through historical, linguistic, literary, and artistic approaches, these studies offer new insights into tafsīr, where faith, scholarship, and political context intersect.
As July begins, we wish you all a wonderful summer filled with rest, discovery… and reading! For us in Cairo, summer will be a time of study: in a few days, we will have the joy of welcoming six young Dominican Brothers for a language internship, and we will launch our summer school on the topic “Citizenship and Religious Pluralism” as part of the Anawati Chair. A beautiful intellectual and fraternal adventure awaits us—one that is also, for us, a sign of hope.
Lecture
On June 9, Jean Jacques Pérennès, OP gave a lecture in Noirmoutier on the topic “Tibhirine: A Monastic Presence in the Land of Islam”.
Call for Applications | Chair “Mediterranean, Religions and Societies”
The Chair “Mediterranean, Religions and Societies” is launching a call for applications for its first year of activity. This call is open to PhD students whose research focuses on the Chair’s topics (interreligious dialogue, social and religious dynamics in the Mediterranean, etc.). The application deadline is July 25, 2025. Click here for more details in French…
Thesis Defense
On July 7, Mr. Pierre Courtain defended, at the University of Louvain, the private defense of his doctoral dissertation entitled “The Dominican Quran in Latin Europe in the 13ᵗʰ Century”, under the joint supervision of Mr. John Tolan (Nantes Université) and Mr. Paul Bertrand (UCLouvain, secretary of the jury). The jury was made up of Mr. Mehdi Azaiez (UCLouvain, president of the jury), Ms. Cándida Ferrero Hernández (Autonomous University of Barcelona, external reader), and Emmanuel Pisani, OP (IDEO/ICP).
General Assembly of the Association “Friends of IDEO”
On June 30ᵗʰ, Emmanuel Pisani, OP took part in the board meeting and the general assembly of the “Friends of IDEO” association, without whose support the Institute’s activities and operating costs could not be covered.
Visit
On June 12ᵗʰ, we had the pleasure of welcoming Ms. Magdalena Cruz Yábar, Counselor for Cultural and Scientific Affairs at the Embassy of Spain in Egypt.
Scholars’ House
During the month of June, we had the pleasure of welcoming the following researchers to the Scholars’ House:
- Anna Giaconia, a PhD student in the Department of History at Ghent University, working on political thought in Late Antiquity.
- Charlotte Courreye, Associate Professor at the Faculty of Languages, Lyon III University, researching educational cooperation between the Mashreq and the Maghreb during the Arabization period, from the 1960s to the 1990s.
Publications
Emmanuel Pisani, « Les chrétiens et les religions dans le Laṭāʾif al-išārāt d’Abū al-Qāsim al-Qušayrī (m. 465/1073) », MIDÉO 40, 2025, p. 113-144.
Emmanuel Pisani, « Louis Massignon ou le verbe s’est fait chair », in Piotr Sękowski, Chrześcijańska teologia islamu Louisa Massignona (Louis Massignon’s Christian Theology of Islam), Gliwice-Rome, SEKO, 2024, p. 67‑71.
Dominique Avon, « Dialogue entre catholiques et musulmans : une mise en perspective historique », En Dialogue, mars-juin 2025.
Walid Saleh, “The Quran and the Mountains: A Reading of Q. al-Raʿd 13:31 in the Tafsīr Tradition”, MIDÉO 40, 2025, p. 87-112.