Rethinking Modern Politics Through Jewish and Islamic Sources – REPOLIJIS

The objective of this project is to conduct a comparative study of post-WWII endeavours to rethink and reshape modern politics by
turning to Jewish and Islamic traditions of political thought. The comparison is based on the fact that both these monotheistic
traditions were conceived as heterogenic to Christian underpinnings of secularized European political thought and therefore as
offering new horizons for modern politics. The novelty with respect to existing scholarship consists in comparatively situating
contemporary projects of Jewish and Islamic thought in post-WWII contexts of post-Holocaust and post-colonial developments in
North Africa and the Middle East. The project will be for a term of 48 months. It will be structured by three central themes of modern
political thought: (1) sovereignty, (2) law and (3) nationalism. The research on each theme will constitute a work package (WP), based
on a comparative study of Jewish and Islamic political thought. The research in each WP will be conducted by a team formed around
one younger and one senior researcher. The studies conducted by the three teams will progress in a coordinated manner, such that
each year of the project (except for the preparatory year 1) will be dedicated to one intersecting perspective, that will be the theme of
a workshop or a conference: (i) secularization, (ii) decolonization and (iii) democracy. The project is motivated by the hypothesis that a
comparative study of endeavours to assert Jewish and Islamic traditions in modern political thought will help to better understand
common dynamics and to complicate existing narratives of conflict or incompatibility, both between Jewish and Islamic cultures and
between them and European culture.