Episode Seven: Beauty and Love with Dr Joseph Lumbard 

What is the nature and significance of beauty in Islamic theology and intellectual thought? To what extent did theological, philosophical, and mystical ideas inform the production and reception of Islamic material culture? These and other questions will be the focus of the English interview series "Beauty and Islamic Theology", a series that explores the rich and diverse relationships between theology, art, and aesthetics in the Islamic world.
In this week's conversation, Dr. Bilal Badat talks to Associate Professor of Qur’anic Studies (Hamad Bin Khalifa University, College of Islamic Studies), Dr. Joseph Lumbard. Dr. Lumbard describes some of the major themes in the Sufi love tradition, the difference between ‘ḥubb’ and ‘ʿishq', and the relationship between beauty and love.
Dr. Joseph Lumbard is Associate Professor of Quranic Studies at Hamad Bin Khalifa University, College of Islamic Studies. He has previously taught at the American University of Sharjah, Brandeis University, and the American University in Cairo. He also served as Advisor for Interfaith Affairs to the Jordanian Royal Court. He received his PhD in Islamic Studies from Yale University and has studied with scholars in Morocco, Egypt, Yemen, Jordan, and Iran. His scholarship contributes to the fields of Islamic philosophical theology, Sufism, and Quranic studies. He served as author, translator, and general editor for The Study Quran (HarperOne 2015), which has been heralded as one of the most important contributions to Islamic studies in the English language. His current research incorporates aspects of Quranic studies, philosophy and theology to focus upon the development of epistemologies in Islam.
Dr. Joseph Lumbard is also the host of the brilliant Qur’an for All Seasons, a podcast dedicated to holistic engagement with the Quran through scholarly and spiritual reflections upon the text.
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The interview series concludes the one-year AIWG project workshop "Beauty and Islamic Theology", a joint research program of the Centre for Islamic Theology at the Eberhard-Karls-University Tübingen and the Chair of Islamic Religious Studies at the Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nuremberg.