In this episode of History Speaks, Dr. Roshan Iqbal speaks with Dr. Sarra Tlili, author of Animals in the Qur’an, a groundbreaking work—translated into Arabic—that has reshaped scholarship on Islam, ethics, and the environment. Together, they explore her thesis that the Qur’an is theocentric and not an anthropocentric text and what this means for how we understand creation and ourselves. This episode is dedicated, with Dr. Tlili’s permission, to the life and legacy of Jane Goodall.
Dr. Sarra Tlili is Associate Professor of Arabic literature and language at the University of Florida. She earned her M.A. and Ph.D. in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations from the University of Pennsylvania. Before joining the University of Florida, she taught at the U.S. Department of State’s Foreign Service Institute in Tunis, the Middlebury Arabic Language Summer Program, and the NELC Department at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research focuses on animal and environmental ethics in Islam and Qur’anic stylistics. She is the author of Animals in the Qur’an (Cambridge University Press, 2012) and is currently working on a monograph exploring representations of animals in hadith literature. Her other publications include “The Canine Companion of the Cave: The Place of the Dog in Qur’anic Taxonomy” (2018), “Animal Ethics in Islam: A Review Article” (2018), “From Breath to Soul: The Qur’anic Word Rūḥ and its (Mis)interpretations” (2017), and “An Islamic Case for Insect Ethics” (2024).
Dr. Roshan Iqbal hails from a small hamlet of 20 million–Karachi, Pakistan. She received her PhD in Islamic Studies from Georgetown University. Prior to this she read for her MPhil at the University of Cambridge. She has studied in Pakistan, the US, Morocco, Egypt, Jordon, the UK, and Iran. Her research interests include gender and sexuality in the Qur’an, Islamic Law, Film and Me
dia Studies, and modern Muslim intellectuals. Her recent book is titled, ‘Marital and Sexual Ethics in Islamic Law: Rethinking Temporary Marriage.’ As an associate professor at Agnes Scott College, she teaches classes in the Religious Studies department and also classes that are cross-listed with Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and Film Studies. When she is not working, she loves talking to her family and friends on the phone (thank you, unlimited plans), tracking fashion (sartorial flourishes are such fun), watching films (love! love! love!), reading novels (never enough), painting watercolors (less and less poorly), and cooking new dishes (sometimes successfully).