In our current healthcare system, dying is a medical, institutionalized and individual matter. This can clash with older religious traditions such as Islam, and lead to misunderstanding and tensions.
With The Art of Dying in Islamic Traditions (600-1800), Pieter Coppens, associate professor of Islam at VU Amsterdam, wants to change that. His research proposal has earned him a Vidi grant from NWO.
What is your research?
It has been said that deathbed traditions perfectly reflect 'the feeling of life of a time'. Religious traditions have always set standards for a good deathbed over the centuries. Knowledge of this over a longer period of time helps us to understand how the philosophy of life and the world of a civilization has changed over the centuries. We hardly know anything about the history of Islamic standards of dying through the centuries. I am going to map that out thoroughly for the first time.
My project analyses Muslims' views on 'the good death' throughout history, what physical, sensory and emotional standards were used, and what legal and ethical considerations they had. Through a diachronic analysis of deathbed stories and instructional works, it shows when and how these norms and considerations changed over the centuries. In this way, my team and I provide important new insights towards a 'global history of dying'.
Why is this relevant right now?
We currently see in Dutch health care that the expectations of modern institutionalized, medicalized and individualized dying can clash with older religious traditions. This regularly leads to tension and misunderstanding around the Islamic deathbed. I am convinced that deep historical reflection on Islamic dying norms can help us to have a better informed social conversation about it.
How does winning the Vidi grant help your work?
I've had that idea in my head for several years, and it's still hard to comprehend that I can actually execute it now. I am especially happy that this grant gives me the opportunity to put together my own research team for the first time and to really work together on the same project. This way you discover much more and it is fun too. The fact that I can guide new talent on their way to an independent academic career is good for them and for our field. It gives a new vitality impulse that we as religious researchers desperately need.
Did you expect it?
The margins are always very small with these types of requests. So there are also very good, maybe even better, researchers who just didn't make it by small coincidences. I am very grateful that I now have the opportunity, but as far as I am concerned, our system of research funding needs to be overhauled. A system where everyone has a basic guarantee of research time and paid PhDs without this kind of harsh competition would be fairer and better for science.