UNESCO CHAIR For Inter-Religious Dialogue Studies in The Islamic World
The Department of Arabic Language at the College of Arts, University of Kufa, convened on Tuesday, July 2, 2025, to examine a master’s thesis entitled “The Implicatures in the Epistles of Imam Ali (Peace Be Upon Him) – A Pragmatic Approach,” submitted by the student Abdulbasit Fadhil Jaafar, under the scholarly supervision of Dr. Tahseen Fadhil Abbas, a distinguished member of the UNESCO Chair for Interreligious Dialogue.
This academic endeavor aspires to unveil the nuanced patterns of both implicit and explicit speech acts within the epistles of Imam Ali, exploring how context and presupposition intricately shape the architecture of his discourse. Through the lens of modern linguistic theory, the study illuminates the pragmatic dimension of these epistles, endeavoring to decode the mechanisms by which the recipient discerns unspoken meanings and latent intentions.
What lends this research its distinctive intellectual merit is its audacious attempt to bridge Western pragmatic theory with the rhetorical legacy of Islamic thought. It offers a dialogical reading of Arab-Islamic heritage—one that transcends mere aesthetic admiration to embrace a functional and communicative comprehension of sacred discourse.
This thesis stands as a substantive contribution to the analytical methods employed in the study of religious discourse, and to the broader quest for nurturing deeper, more meaningful avenues of human dialogue.
