Mohsen Goudarzi Presents: "Judaism in the Qur’an" (Virtual Webinar)

Center for Jewish Studies Annual Community Lecture Series Wednesday, October 14, 2020 This talk explores the relationship between the Prophet Muhammad’s movement and West Arabian Jewish communities. The first part will briefly survey some pertinent information about the presence and status of Jewish communities across the Arabian Peninsula in the sixth and seventh centuries. The second part will focus on the Qur’an, highlighting the diverse approaches that the Islamic scripture adopts towards Muhammad’s Jewish contemporaries. The presentation ends by examining whether and how these sometimes contrasting approaches can be harmonized. Mohsen Goudarzi is Assistant Professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Minnesota’s Classical and Near Eastern Studies Department. His research focuses on the intellectual and social aspects of Islam’s emergence, in particular the Qur’an’s relationship to Late Antique literature as well as its textual history. Cosponsor