Khaoula El Omrani

Khaoula obtained her MA in Civilizational studies at Ibn Khaldun University in Türkiye and is part of the "Economic Cosmology: Ethics, Sustainability, and the Nonhuman in the Muslim World (EcoCos)” project. Her comparative project critically analyzes the hegemony of capitalism and the nation-state by looking at the role of Sufi orders (turuq) in the production of moral capital and civic virtues across the Muslim world.

The research deploys a mixed-methods approach that combines historical analysis of sources of Islamic moral philosophy with a comparative ethnographic study of Sufi institutions in Morocco, Egypt and Turkey, with special attention to their varying engagements with the nation-state as an institution entangled with capitalist structures. In bridging the field of political economy with decolonial studies and Islamic ethics, this research aims to contribute to the discourse on alternative economic and environmental thought through a redefinition of human agency and socio-political institutions illustrated in a new understanding of Sufi tariqas as crucial agents in the formation of moral technologies of the self and the production of public value.