Religion and ethics professor will give talk on Islamic State

John Kelsay, a distinguished research professor in religion, ethics and philosophy at Florida State University, will be in Spokane this week to talk about the radical Islamic terrorist group the Islamic State.

His lecture, “The Debate over the Islamic State: Muslim Perspectives on Religion and Politics,” will be delivered at 5 p.m. Thursday at the Jepson Center’s Wolff Auditorium, on the Gonzaga University campus.

At Florida State, Kelsay focuses on religious ethics in primarily the Christian and Islamic traditions. He is the author of several books, including 2007’s “Arguing the Just War in Islam” (Harvard University Press) and 1993’s “Islam and War: A Study in Comparative Ethics.” He edits “Soundings: An Interdisciplinary Journal” and is director of FSU’s Center for the Humanities and Society.

According to a news release from Gonzaga, Kelsay will discuss “phenomenon of the Islamic State and Muslim scholarly and popular responses to it.” He will describe the debate and compare ISIS to other Islamist militant groups, such as al-Qaida, and discuss how the intra-Muslim debate plays out in terms of U.S. foreign policy.

The lecture is free and intended for a general audience. It is sponsored by Gonzaga’s Public Humanities Task Force, the College of Arts and Sciences and the religious studies department.