Research project explores Muslim responses to existential risks facing humanity

A team led by Professor Caroline Tee, Professor of the Anthropology of Islam, has been awarded a £1.2 million grant by Templeton Religion Trust for a three-year international project entitled: Muslims, the Secular, and Existential Risk. The project’s co-leader is Dr Amin El-Yousfi from the University of Cambridge.  

Caroline will lead a team of five researchers who will work with English and French-speaking Muslim communities to understand how engagements with the Qur’an, Sunna and associated texts influence their understanding of risk and will consider their findings in the context of Anglophone and Francophone secularisms. 

The project will use ethnographic fieldwork and textual approaches to bring anthropology and theology together to examine Muslim responses to the existential risks facing humanity, which include pandemic diseases, the climate emergency, the risks of nuclear conflict and unknown developments in Artificial Intelligence (AI).  

Such risks are felt differently across human societies and the project will address the need for a diverse range of material, intellectual and spiritual responses to them. With such a high proportion of the world professing a religious affiliation, the team will underscore the importance of religious perspectives on these risks being taken seriously.  

The project therefore aims to explore how Muslims engage with the sciences, structures and practices of ‘ilm (knowledge) radiating from the Islamic sources (Qur’an and sunna, as well as texts from fields such as fiqh, tasawwuf and aqida) to conceptualize and respond to existential risk. 

The study's findings will lead to a book, two conferences, and papers for academic journals. It is hoped that the project's major scholarly outputs will launch a new field of enquiry surrounding religion and risk. 

Caroline is a social anthropologist of Islam whose research explores the diverse ways in which Islam is lived in the contemporary world, focusing on the intersections between religion, democratic politics and other major institutions of modernity such as modern science, secular education, and civic engagement. 

The Templeton Religion Trust (TRT) is a global charitable trust chartered by Sir John Templeton which supports projects as well as storytelling related to projects seeking to enrich the conversation about religion. 

Caroline said: “This grant will enable the team to carry out work that demonstrates that religious voices need to be much better facilitated, heard and understood on questions of existential risk that we face as a common humanity. Currently, engagement with these questions is dominated by secular narratives and perspectives and we believe that more diverse representation from religious communities will greatly enrich the conversation, to the benefit of us all. The project foregrounds and communicates the wisdom of the Islamic tradition, in part because it is particularly under-represented in conversations on existential risk. We aim to show how the Islamic sources can serve as a dynamic force for positive social change.” 

Professor Paul Bissell, Pro Vice-Chancellor Research and Innovation at the University of Chester, said: I’m delighted that Professor Tee has obtained this prestigious grant from Templeton Religion Trust to deliver what is clearly ground-breaking research. I look forward to hearing from her and the team as they identify how Islamic sources can deepen our understanding of existential risk. This grant provides another demonstration of the quality of the research being undertaken at the University of Chester.”