NIAS podcast Room to explore... an islamic history of ideas
with Ahmed El Shamsy & Pieter Coppens
22 January 2026Historicism and essentialism in the study of Islamic history
The academic study of Islam classifies the vast majority of Muslims today as Sunnis. But many of these Muslims do not necessarily identify themselves as such, nor is the classification based on a robust definition of what a Sunni is, or even what kind of a phenomenon Sunnism represents. Is it a theology? An attitude toward politics and religion? An affiliation with one of the four “Sunni” schools of Islamic law? Or simply a residual category for Muslims who do not fit any other, better-defined category? Does Sunnism constitute a sect or a denomination? Do such terms even make sense when applied to a religious landscape that has no centralised authority comparable to a church?
The goal of Ahmed El Shamsy’s project at NIAS is not to define the boundaries of “true” Sunnism but rather to reconstruct what Sunnism meant in particular times and places, especially to those who used the label to describe themselves. Focusing on the hitherto sidelined early history of Sunnism is crucial for understanding Sunnism as a whole, because it renders intelligible the continuing debates and tensions among later Sunnis as they grappled with the task of harmonizing their discordant heritage.
Ahmed El Shamsy is Professor of Islamic Thought at the University of Chicago. He studies how Sunnism emerged as a coherent confessional identity, and how it both reflected and shaped its adherents’ views of history, politics, and theology.
Pieter Coppens is Associate Professor of Islamic Intellectual and Cultural History at the Free University in Amsterdam. He studies paradigm shifts within Islamic thought and culture, through longue durée investigation of specific themes such as Sufism, Salafism, eschatology, sensory history, history of emotions, and the history of dying.
Room to explore is researched and interviewed by Annick van Rinsum. Find Annick on LinkedIn.
