Monthly Seminar: Ibn Khaldun in the 21st Century: Is He Still Relevant?
A Talk by Dr Farid Al-Attas
Monday 2nd October 2023
6.00 P.M. – 7.30 P.M. (LONDON TIME)
Venue:
133 High Road, The Islamic College London
Speaker: Dr Farid Al-Attas
Title of the talk: Ibn Khaldun in the 21st Century: Is He Still Relevant?
Date: Monday, 2nd October 2023
Time: 6 pm – 7:30 pm
Syed Farid Alatas is Professor of Sociology at the National University of Singapore (NUS), and Visiting Professor at the Department of Anthropology & Sociology at the University of Malaya. He also headed the Department of Malay Studies at NUS from 2007 till 2013. Prior to joining NUS he taught at the University of Malaya in the Department of Southeast Asian Studies. In the early 1990s, he was a Research Associate at the Women and Human Resource Studies Unit, Universiti Sains Malaysia. Alatas has authored numerous books and articles, including Applying Ibn Khaldun: The Recovery of a Lost Tradition in Sociology (Routledge, 2014), and (with Vineeta Sinha) Sociological Theory Beyond the Canon (Palgrave, 2017); “Political Economies of Knowledge Production: On and Around Academic Dependency”, Journal of Historical Sociology 35, 1(2022): 14-23; and “Knowledge Hegemonies and Autonomous Knowledge”, Third World Quarterly (published online: 04 Oct 2022). His areas of interest are social theory, religion and reform, the sociology of Islam, intra- and inter-religious dialogue, and the study of Eurocentrism.
Religion and Secularism in Turkey: Problems and Prospect
A Talk by Dr Caroline Tee
Thursday 21 September 2023
6.00 P.M. – 7.30 P.M. (LONDON TIME)
Venue:
133 High Road, The Islamic College London
Speaker: Dr Caroline Tee
Title of the talk: “Religion and Secularism in Turkey: Problems and Prospect”
Date: Thursday, 21 September 2023
Time: 6 pm – 7:30 pm
Dr Tee is Associate Professor of Modern Islam, and Programme Leader, MA Theology and Religious Studies, Department of Theology and Religious Studies
University of Chester
In her academic research, she is interested in the diverse ways in which Islam is lived in the contemporary world. She focuses on the intersection between religion, democratic politics and other major institutions of modernity such as modern science, secular education, and civic engagement. She has carried out extensive ethnographic fieldwork over the course of six years in Turkey, and has published primarily on the subject of the Alevi minority and the socio-religious movement led by the US-based imam Fethullah Gülen. She is the series editor (with Ashraf Hoque) for the Edinburgh Studies in Anthropology of Islam book series at Edinburgh University Press.
Dr Tee also work on Islam in the UK and is currently Principal Investigator on the project ‘A Hermeneutics of Civic Engagement? Reading the Qur’an and Sunna in British Islam’, which is funded by Templeton Religion Trust between 2019-2023.
Beauty in Sufism: The Teachings of Ruzbihan Baqli
A Talk by Dr Kazuyo Murata
Thursday, 16 March 2023
6.00 P.M. – 8.00 P.M. (LONDON TIME)
Venue:
133 High Road, The Islamic College London
DR Kazuyo Murata is a Senior Lecturer in Islamic Studies at King’s College London. She holds a PhD in Islamic Studies with a joint MPhil in Medieval Studies from Yale University, and a BA (summa cum laude) in both Philosophy and Religious Studies from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. She has broad academic training in the study of religion, philosophy, medieval intellectual history, and Arabic and Persian literature. Her publications include:
Beauty in Sufism: The Teachings of Ruzbihan Baqli (Albany: SUNY Press, 2017).
In Search of the Lost Heart: Explorations in Islamic Thought (co-edited) (Albany: SUNY Press, 2012).
Her monograph, Beauty in Sufism: The Teachings of Ruzbihan Baqli (Albany: SUNY Press, 2017), is the first book-length study of the place of beauty in a common Sufi understanding of God, the world, and the human being, encompassing multiple fields of inquiry such as theology, metaphysics, cosmology, psychology, anthropology, and prophetology. This work takes as the case study the works of a major Sufi master from Shiraz, Persia, Ruzbihan Baqli (d. 1209), in whose vast and complex worldview the notion of “beauty” (husn, jamal, etc.) plays a significant role.
Monthly Seminar: Ibn Khaldun in the 21st Century: Is He Still Relevant?
A Talk by Dr Farid Al-Attas
Monday 2nd October 2023
6.00 P.M. – 7.30 P.M. (LONDON TIME)
Venue:
133 High Road, The Islamic College London
Speaker: Dr Farid Al-Attas
Title of the talk: Ibn Khaldun in the 21st Century: Is He Still Relevant?
Date: Monday, 2nd October 2023
Time: 6 pm – 7:30 pm
Syed Farid Alatas is Professor of Sociology at the National University of Singapore (NUS), and Visiting Professor at the Department of Anthropology & Sociology at the University of Malaya. He also headed the Department of Malay Studies at NUS from 2007 till 2013. Prior to joining NUS he taught at the University of Malaya in the Department of Southeast Asian Studies. In the early 1990s, he was a Research Associate at the Women and Human Resource Studies Unit, Universiti Sains Malaysia. Alatas has authored numerous books and articles, including Applying Ibn Khaldun: The Recovery of a Lost Tradition in Sociology (Routledge, 2014), and (with Vineeta Sinha) Sociological Theory Beyond the Canon (Palgrave, 2017); “Political Economies of Knowledge Production: On and Around Academic Dependency”, Journal of Historical Sociology 35, 1(2022): 14-23; and “Knowledge Hegemonies and Autonomous Knowledge”, Third World Quarterly (published online: 04 Oct 2022). His areas of interest are social theory, religion and reform, the sociology of Islam, intra- and inter-religious dialogue, and the study of Eurocentrism.
Beauty in Sufism: The Teachings of Ruzbihan Baqli
A Talk by Dr Kazuyo Murata
Thursday, 16 March 2023
6.00 P.M. – 8.00 P.M. (LONDON TIME)
Venue:
133 High Road, The Islamic College London
DR Kazuyo Murata is a Senior Lecturer in Islamic Studies at King’s College London. She holds a PhD in Islamic Studies with a joint MPhil in Medieval Studies from Yale University, and a BA (summa cum laude) in both Philosophy and Religious Studies from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. She has broad academic training in the study of religion, philosophy, medieval intellectual history, and Arabic and Persian literature. Her publications include:
Beauty in Sufism: The Teachings of Ruzbihan Baqli (Albany: SUNY Press, 2017).
In Search of the Lost Heart: Explorations in Islamic Thought (co-edited) (Albany: SUNY Press, 2012).
Her monograph, Beauty in Sufism: The Teachings of Ruzbihan Baqli (Albany: SUNY Press, 2017), is the first book-length study of the place of beauty in a common Sufi understanding of God, the world, and the human being, encompassing multiple fields of inquiry such as theology, metaphysics, cosmology, psychology, anthropology, and prophetology. This work takes as the case study the works of a major Sufi master from Shiraz, Persia, Ruzbihan Baqli (d. 1209), in whose vast and complex worldview the notion of “beauty” (husn, jamal, etc.) plays a significant role.
The Future of Interfaith
“Towards Universal Fraternity”
A Lecture by Revd Jon Dal Din
Tuesday 20th December 2022
6.00 P.M. – 7.30 P.M. (LONDON TIME)
Venue:
The Islamic College
133 High Road Willesden Green London NW102SW
Revd Jon Dal Din is the former Director of Westminster Interfaith (2008-2021). He is now a member of the Focolare Movement and delegate for interreligious dialogue on the Focolare Council for Western Europe
Theatre Night with Khayaal
Friday 16th December 2022
6.00 P.M. – 9.00 P.M. (LONDON TIME)
Venue:
133 High Road, The Islamic College London
Worth of a Pearl
King Mahmud devises a test of loyalty and devotion for select high-ranking officials of his royal court involving a lustrous pearl. A tale by Rumi.
The Thornseller
Down and out on the margins of society, our thorn seller and his wife live in abject poverty until the appearance of a heavenly bird sets off a chain of events that sends their fortunes soaring and plummeting in equal measure. The alchemy of character and intention lie at the heart of this tumultuous story from Iran.
The Indian Tree
An emissary is dispatched to India to seek out the tree of eternal life only to have his efforts frustrated and his assumptions challenged by initial failure before being rightly directed to his goal at the 11th hour.
Join us, for what is going to be memorable night filled with wisdom.
Date: Friday 16th December 2022
Time: 6pm – 9pm
Location: Allameh Tabataba’i Hall (old building), The Islamic College, 133 High Road, Willesden, London NW10 2SW
Ticket Price: £5 (includes free complimentary light refreshments)
Terms & Conditions:
- Tickets can be purchased via PayPal: https://paypal.me/ahmadbawab1?country.x=GB&locale.x=en_GB (reference: Theatre Night). Alternatively, you can purchase your ticket via cash, credit card or bank transfer. For further enquiries contact Fatema Muraj.
- Tickets cannot be exchanged, or money refunded unless the performance for which the ticket is purchased is cancelled.
- Attendees must have a valid ticket to gain entry to the hall.
- Only 1 admission per ticket.
- Additional Guest (aged 16+) are welcome, subject to purchase of a valid ticket.
- The doors of the hall will open at 6:45pm and the performance will start at 7:15pm(sharp).
- Refreshments will be served before the performance from 6pm onwards.
- Food and Drink will not be allowed inside the Allameh Tabataba’i Hall.
Building the “Silk Road” From Below: Arab Traders Between East and West Asia
A Talk by Dr Paul Anderson
HRH Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal University Associate Professor in Middle Eastern Studies
Assistant Director, HRH Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Centre of Islamic Studies
Tuesday 13th December 2022
6.00 P.M. – 8.00 P.M. (LONDON TIME)
Venue:
133 High Road, The Islamic College London
Friday 27th of May 2022
6:30 pm – 8:00 pm (UK Time)
Prophet Mohammad in the Eyes of Westerners
This talk offers an ethnographic account and theorisation of some of the commercial geographies and economic networks that have connected the market city of Yiwu in south-eastern China to the Middle East over the past two decades. Analysts have also often highlighted the Muslim and Arab ethnic nature of the transnational economic networks which connect Yiwu to markets across the Middle East. But rather than adopting a network governance approach which sees these networks as embedded in a shared culture or ethnicity which furnishes the possibility of trust, I adopt a structural analysis approach in which traders act as brokers, moving and mediating between different geographies.
Dr Paul Anderson is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Cambridge. He is a social anthropologist interested in the articulation of economic, moral and religious life. He has conducted ethnographic fieldwork in Syria, Turkey, China and the UAE. His forthcoming book on Syria, published in March 2023 with Cornell University Press, is entitled Exchange Ideologies: Commerce, Language and Patriarchy in Pre-Conflict Aleppo.
Founding editor of the Islamic World Report, Reza Shah-Kazemi studied International Relations and Politics at Sussex and Exeter Universities before obtaining his PhD in Comparative Religion from the University of Kent in 1994. He has authored and translated several works, including, Paths to Transcendence: According to Shankara, Ibn Arabi and Meister Eckhart (World Wisdom, 2006); Justice and Remembrance: Introducing the Spirituality of Imam ‘Ali (I. B. Tauris, in association with The Institute of Ismaili Studies); Seeing God Everywhere: Quranic Perspectives on the Sanctity of Virgin Nature (Cambridge Central Mosque, 2019).
Formerly a Consultant to the Institute for Policy Research in Kuala Lampur, Malaysia, Dr Shah-Kazemi is at present a Senior Research Associate at the Institute of Ismaili Studies, where he is editing the English translation and edition of the Great Islamic Encyclopaedia (from Persian).
Prophet Mohammad in the Eyes of Westerners
Prof Ali Paya
Lecturer: Professor Ali Paya
Thursday 2oth October 2022
6.00 P.M. – 8.00 P.M. (LONDON TIME)
Venue:
133 High Road , The Islamic College London
Prophet Mohammad in the Eyes of Westerners
The story of how, only a few decades after the Prophet Mohammad (pbuh) declared his mission until our time, some among those with the power to influence the masses, i.e. preachers, clerics, politicians, scholars, artists and in modern times, the media (of all sorts, books, journals, newspapers, radios and TVs, cinema, music), did their best to present a distorted portrait of the Prophet of Islam to Westerners, contains all elements of a powerful drama, including, fear, insecurity, hatred, jealousy, deceit, admiration, love, respect, and many more.
The aim of this talk is to present a brief, though objective and, it is hoped, informative as well as balanced account of the ways in which various personalities and institutions have represented the Prophet Mohammad (pbuh) to Westerners throughout the ages.
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