Cosmic and Animal Piety in Islam

This book offers an original perspective on animal studies, Islam and the extensions of religion, engaging with ideas and narratives in which nonhuman creatures (both animate and inanimate) are portrayed as the ideal worshippers of God. Moreover, it argues that this piety of animals and the wider worshipping cosmos not only represents an ideal form of worship, but also serves as a model for more fallible human piety.

Walid Ghali is Associate Professor of Arabic and Islamic studies at AKU-ISMC and specialist in Arabic manuscripts tradition. He also leads the Aga Khan Library in the United Kingdom. He received his PhD in 2012 from Cairo University, Faculty of Arts in Arabic manuscripts traditions. His main research areas focus on Sufism and the Arabic manuscripts tradition. He is currently working on a research project about the Egyptian reformer Muhammad Abduh (1905) through newly discovered documents. Guillaume de Vaulx is presently coordinator of the Inistra (Institute of Islamic Studies – Strasbourg). He received his PhD in 2017 from Sorbonne University in Arabic Philosophy and presented a thesis on the Epistles of the Brethren in Purity (Iḫwān al-ṣafā). His main research areas focus on the philosophy and theology of the 9th and 10th century (3rd and 4th century of Islam) and the history of Arabic zoology. Asmaa El Maaroufi is Junior Professor of Islamic Philosophy at the Centre for Islamic Theology of Muenster University. She earned her doctorate in the field of Islamic theology with a dissertation on “The Ethics of Being-with. Principles of Animal Ethics in Islamic Theology”. Her current research focuses on the possibilities and opportunities of Islamic philosophical ethics, yet also encompasses practical issues of ethics, such as medical, environmental, and animal ethics. Nicolas Payen is Research and Teaching Assistant in Arabic Studies at ENS de Lyon. From 2020 to 2023, Nicolas Payen served as a doctoral candidate within the ERC-funded project entitled “Animals in the Philosophy of the Islamic World,” under the guidance of Prof. Peter Adamson (LMU Munich). Payen’s doctoral dissertation centers on the exploration of the concept of the animal and the evolution of zoography during the early stages of Islamic civilization.