февраля 2016
The Summer Programme on Islam, held from 14 - 20 July 2016, is an annual residential programme that brings together a diverse group of Ismailis from different regions and professions to engage in an introductory study of Islam and contemporary issues of Muslim societies.
A new purpose-built halls of residence developed by the AKDN is now operational.
Many societies of the Muslim world, for all their rich traditions of diversity and generosity, have lately fallen prey to ugly sectarian division. Communities that have long been part of the larger Islamic world and its heritage — Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, and various minority Muslim communities — find themselves in peril. Religious difference becomes, in this sectarian milieu, a reason for mistrust and persecution. The worst examples play themselves out in daily news stories, but an underlying failure of tolerance is more widespread.
The medieval Mediterranean littoral was a region inhabited by people of diverse ethnic backgrounds and religious persuasions. This was evident in 10th century Egypt, the mainstay of Fatimid domains, a land in which lived Arabs, Turks, Greeks, Armenians, Berbers and Sudanese - among whom were Sunni and Shia
Muslims, Coptic, Melkite and Nestorian Christians, as well as Rabbanite and Qaraite Jews. It was in this milieu that the Fatimids established the first Shi‘i Empire across the southern shores of the Mediterranean, from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea.
This lecture will discuss how developing themes found in the Qur’an and culled from Greek and Jewish, Indian and other sources, Muslim thinkers forged a compelling humanism, precious in the classical age and deserving recovery and reconstruction in our own. The literary form of the risāla (or essay), which developed from the letter writing familiar to the secretarial class, significantly contributed to Islamic humanism. For the informality of a letter overcomes the stiffness of a treatise, the intensity of oratory the and sidesteps the agonistic potential of many a dialogical exchange. The intimacy of address to a friend establishes a sense of privacy and confidentiality even as it modestly vouches for the need that publication seeks to serve. So we readily appreciate the use of the risāla form in the philosophical essays of al-Kindī and in those of the Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ, where Indian fables mingle with Greek philosophy and science, Arabic lore and poetry. Ibn ufayl and Maimonides in his wake adopt the risāla form for just these reasons.
Sciences of the Soul and Intellect, Part I; An Arabic Critical Edition and English Translation of Epistles 32-36 has a strong cosmological orientation, with a particular focus on the relationship between microcosm and macrocosm, earthly and celestial. The content of this publication is more metaphysical and abstract, whilst in a sense also more human.