Lecturer: Payam Mohseni, Director of the Project on Shi’ism & Global Affairs, Harvard Divinity School (affiliation at the date recorded)

Duration: 1 hour 19 minutes

Date Recorded: September 2022

Subject: What is “religion” and what makes it a discrete entity? This talk explores what the concept of religion means and why it can be a misnomer when discussing Islam. The talk focuses on internal Islamic definitions of religion—focusing on ma’rifa, the Imam, and Arbaeen—and how certain understandings of Islam through a comparative world religions lens can lose sight of the unique and idiosyncratic beliefs within Islam that do not map easily in a “religious” framework.