Beyond Sharia: Arash Ghajarjazi on Secularity in the Persian Cultural Area

Dr. Arash Ghajarjazi is a postdoctoral fellow for the ERC-Advanced Grant Beyond Sharia: The Role of Sufism in Shaping Islam, (the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Grant agreement No. 101020403) led by Professor Asghar Seyed-Gohrab. In the project, Arash does research on medieval non-conformist ideas and the emergence of secularity in the Persian cultural area. He writes a monograph on the cultural history of unbelief in Persianate culture, examining the writings of several Persian intellectuals who criticized the holiest tenets of Islam, such as Omar Khayyam. His thinking can sometimes be called downright atheistic, and his quatrains are still world-famous.
In this video, Arash shows how centuries before the Enlightenment in the Christian world, secularist trends were present in the Persian cultural areas.