Destiny, Martyrdom and Predestination in Islam

My research project ‘Rethinking the Syrian Revolution and Migrations through the Prism of Predestination‘, which was based at the CéSor (EHESS) and supported by a LaBex HaStec fellowship (EPHE-PSL), focused on the understanding of the Syrian revolution and migrations through the Sunni concept of ‘predestination’. This research examined material, visual and scriptural accounts of predestination in the Syrian context focusing particularly on the figure of the martyr and expanding the individual interpretation to a collective and historical one, following my interlocutors’ interpretation of their revolution’s defeat and mass migration through predestination.

Moreover, in the article ‘Martyrdom in Time of Revolution: Urgent Actions and Imminent Endings in Syria’ (Social Anthropology, 2022) I focus on the idea(l) and practice of self-sacrifice in relation to political engagement and I show the different imaginations of the Afterlife and various temporalities that are at play in the conception of predestination as a theory of political action.