The Maldivian National University (MNU) is hosting a lecture tonight on Democracy in Islam with Syrian-born scholar Imam Mohamed Bashar Arafat.
After having served as an Imam in Damascus, Syria as well as in the United States, Dr Arafat founded the Civilization Exchange and Cooperation Foundation aimed at promoting better understandings of Islam around the world.
This lecture is the last in a series of small workshops, which have been held across the country in association with schools, government offices, and NGOs, to promote a more moderate understanding of Islamic values and precepts. This lecture is being held in the wake of a popular Maldivian Scholar having given a sermon on how democracy and Islam are completely incompatible.
The lecture will be hosted at the MNU Auditorium in the campus building next to Billabong School at 8:00PM.
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Minivan, any chance you guys could release a transcript of this guys speech?
It is sad that this guy, although a million times more educated and knowledgable about Islam than Bilal Phillips or Naik for example, gets a much smaller audience. Liberal Islam requires so much depth of study into the context of SEEMINGLY oppressive Islamic Texts, and so much in depth understanding of the etymological construction of the Arabic terms used to convey the true essence of Islam, that it is sadly, alien to most people who only have time to take what is said at in Qur'an, Ayat at face value. Liberal Islam, although intended to set the people free from tyranny, develops into a sort of an elitist culture of its own, where as fundamentalism tends to appeal to the masses. The demagogic nature of literalist, fundamentalist Islam is apparent, it FEEDS the vengeance of the oppressed against beauty, art, reason and poetry, seems, these seem like luxuries to those who have to work twenty four seven to earn enough bread and water to keep their families alive.
For example, in the Mosques, one will find a lot of literature about Hadith, Sirah, and the like all written in Madinah. Yet if you want to get books on Islamic Philosphy and what is called liberal Islam, you go into a University library. I found five books by Prof. Abdullah saeed in Curtin and UWA. each brilliant. He is far more brilliant than anyone in Adhalaath or fareed, his Ilm is way deeper, yet, if he gave a public lecture, one might be lucky to get say, 5oo ppl there! THAT is a disgrace!
Somehow, I want to build a bridge between Liberal Islam (and its appeals to reason, poetry, art, science, mercy and social justice) and the poor, the oppressed. I have written a heap of stuff on liberal Islam but I am afraid that it is all so jargonny that most people would think it was a total head wank! When I have time I am going to rewrite it all and explain the jargon clearly, so that, abstract concepts in interpreting, applying Islamic text can be accessible to everyone.
If there were social justice, liberal Islam would spread, not fundamentalism, because poverty and injustice feeds the fundamentalist impulse.
@Ben, not sure if he'd have a transcript, but you can contact Imam Bashar through his Civilizations and Exchange program http://cecf-net.org and/or through Clergy Beyond Borders, www.ClergyBeyondBorders.org. Maybe if he knew the interest, he would publish his remarks?
@Ben,
If you give me a bit, I may be able to get you a transcript. I have most of this speech on video (battery died during the Q&A portion). Also, if you know anyone over at VTV, they were filming that night as well.
Let me know where to send the transcript when I have it finished.