Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd is one of the major Muslim thinkers and scholars of our time. He developed a renewed hermeneutics view of the Qur'an and further Islamic sacred texts, arguing that they should be interpreted in the historical and cultural context of their time. He calls for a humanistic hermeneutics, an interpretation which sees the Qur'an as a living phenomenon, a discourse. Harassed in Egypt for his writings,he now teaches at the University of Leiden, Netherlands.

The lecture will be in English, with the possibility of questions in Arabic during the discussion.