Lecture: The “Religious Genius” of al-Ghazali

Date: Thursday, February 13, 2020
Time: 6:00 pm Light Refreshments; 6:30 pm Talk
Where: Conference Room, Main Bldg, American Islamic College

This topic emanates from a Templeton-funded inter-religious project that Dr. Gianotti was a part of over the past few years. This working group of scholars developed the category of “religious genius” to consider great figures whose profundity and staying power transcends time and even religious boundaries, so much so that they are known and appreciated by other faith communities. Dr. Gianotti took al-Ghazali as a case study and developed a paper exploring why and how he qualifies to be considered a “religious genius.”

Many within the AIC community of students, staff, faculty, and friends will remember Dr. Timothy Gianotti, since he served the College from 2013-2015 as the inaugural Director of Islamic Studies and as an Associate Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies. During that time, he designed and taught a range of graduate and undergraduate courses for the College’s undergraduate and graduate degree programs. He also established and ran the Faculty Council, helped redesign AIC’s existing curricula (BA & MA), and designed AIC’s Master of Divinity in Islamic Studies. Aside from this, he was active in AIC’s institutional and interfaith outreach.

Dr. Gianotti is a scholar of classical Islamic theology, philosophy, and spirituality with strong interests in Islamic Psychology, Ethics, Moral Theology, Education, Political Thought, and comparative mysticism; he is also a theologian and committed interfaith advocate with hands-on experience promoting interfaith engagement around the globe. With more than twenty years of university-level teaching experience in the US and Canada, he has served as an associate professor at the University of Waterloo in Canada, as the York-Noor Chair of Islamic Studies at York University in Canada, and as an assistant professor of Arabic & Islamic Thought at the University of Virginia, the University of Oregon, and Penn State University. He comes to us now from Toronto, where he serves as the founder and principal teacher of the Islamic Institute for Spiritual Formation.

He is the author of two books – Al-Ghazali’s Unspeakable Doctrine of the Soul (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2001) and In the Light of a Blessed Tree: Illuminations of Islamic Belief, Practice, and History (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2011) – in addition to a range of scholarly articles, book chapters, and theological essays considering contemporary issues as well as traditional topics, such as the inner (psycho-spiritual) processes of moral beautification (iḥsān) and character formation within an Islamic framework.