The Primary Texts Program’s Live Ideas Lecture series will host Dr. Murad Idris (U Michigan) Friday. Dr. Idris is giving a talk on an Islamic text, Ibn Tufayl’s Hayy Ibn Yaqzan, this coming Friday, Aril 11!

The Politics and Global Afterlives of Ibn Tufayl’s Hayy Ibn Yaqzan
Over the last two centuries, why did European and Arab intellectuals read Islamic philosophy? This lecture discusses the terms on which they turned to Hayy ibn Yaqzan, a famous allegory by the twelfth-century Andalusian philosopher Ibn Tufayl. The allegory tells the story of a boy who is raised by a doe on an island and eventually attains knowledge of God. The lecture will discuss competing ways of reading the ethics and politics of the allegory, the civilizational and colonial battles over
its significance, and the stakes for the contemporary global humanities