2013-2014 Annual Lecture Series

SHARI’A WITHOUT LAW: THE DILEMMA FACING BRITAIN’S SHARIAH COUNCILS

John R. Bowen

Thursday, September 26, 2013, 7:00 pm

Simon Fraser University
1900 Fletcher Challenge Theatre
515 West Hastings Street,Vancouver

John R. Bowen is the Dunbar-Van Cleve Professor in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, and has been studying Islam and society in Indonesia since the late 1970s. He has written several books including: Blaming Islam (MIT Press, 2012), European States and their Muslim Citizens (Cambridge, 2013) and he is currently writing Shaping British Islam, to appear from Princeton.

“[A New Anthropology of Islam] is a well-written and engaging effort to sketch out an intelligent 'anthropology of Islam' by presenting what particular Muslims 'do' and how those Muslims understand what they do”.—William A. Graham, Murray A. Albertson Professor of Middle Eastern Studies, Harvard University

HOW TO READ THE QUR’AN

Carl W. Ernst

Co-hosted by the Vancouver Muslim Community Centre on the occasion of Islamic History Month.

Thursday, October 24, 2013, 7:00 pm

Simon Fraser University
Joseph and Rosalie Segal Centre 1400-1430
515 West Hastings Street, Vancouver

Many who approach the Qu’ran for the first time find it difficult to read, its organization obscure, its messages cryptic or even threatening. This presentation, based on a new book of the same title, draws on the best of international scholarship to present meaningful strategies for making sense of this complex text. Chronological readings of the original sequence of its delivery, exploration of its links to earlier writings, and clarification of the central points of its symmetrical compositions, all provide interested readers with new tools for comprehending an undeniably important religious document.

Seminar

"Translating Sufism across Cultures: Hallaj and Ruzbihan Baqli" by Carl Ernst

presented by CCSMSC as part of the Fall 2013 Colloquium Series

Friday, October 25, 2013, 11 am

Simon Fraser University
Segal Centre 1420
515 West Hastings Street, Vancouver

CCSMSC Colloquium Series are part of the Centre’s ongoing mission to encourage and enrich academic coverage of Muslim societies and cultures.  Unlike the annual lecture series, which is designed to appeal to a broad audience, the colloquia tend to attract mainly faculty members and students and take the form of small seminars.

Free and open to the public. To access the reading for the seminar click here.

This splendid introduction allows students to begin to understand and appreciate the role of the Qur’an for Muslims. Professor Ernst’s unique approach provides a thorough overview of the scholarship--historical and contemporary, Muslim and non-Muslim--on the Qur’an.

—Amir Hussain, Professor of Theological Studies, Loyola Marymount College.

For more resources on how to read the Qu'ran click here. 

THE OTTOMAN FRONT: THE GREAT WAR IN THE MIDDLE EAST

Eugene Rogan

Thursday, March 13, 2014, 7:00 pm

Simon Fraser University
Joseph and Rosalie Segal Centre, 1400-1430 
515 West Hastings Street, Vancouver

Dr. Eugene Rogan is a Lecturer in the Modern History of the Middle East at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of St Antony’s College. His research interests include the Arab world from the 18th to the 20th century and Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire. Some of his recent publications are: The Arabs: A History (Basic Books, 2011), The Great War in the Middle East, and Outside In: On the Margins of the Modern Middle East (I.B. Tauris, 2001). His previous work, Frontiers of the State in the Late Ottoman Empire: Transjordan 1850- 1921 (Cambridge, 1999), was awarded the Albert Hourani Prize.

To visit his website, please click here.

AN EPISTEMIC REVOLUTION IN ARAB LATE ANTIQUITY: THE QUR’ANIC DISCOVERY OF WRITING

Angelika Neuwirth

Co-hosted by the World Literature Program (SFU)

Thursday, March 27, 2014, 7:00 pm

Simon Fraser University
250-13450 102nd Avenue, Surrey

Dr. Angelika Neuwirth is Professor of Arabic Studies at Freie Universitat in Berlin and the head of the Corpus Coranicum research project of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities. She is one of the world’s leading scholars of the Qur’an and has an honorary doctorate from Yale University’s Department of Religious Studies. Dr. Neuwirth’s research focuses on classical and modern Arabic literature and the Qur’an duringLateAntiquity. Some of her publications include: The Quran in Context (Brill Academic Publishers, 2011), and Arabic Literature: Postmodern Perspectives (Saqi Books, 2010).

"[Arabic Literature: Postmodern Perspectives ]...is an important contribution to the study of modern Arabic literature."

—Lorenza Casini