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Interpreting Islam in Modern Context


Tariq RamadanApril 16, 2012 at 8:00 pm
Price Center Ballroom B
UC San Diego campus

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Interpreting Islam in Modern Context

Tariq Ramadan
Professor of Contemporary Islamic Studies, University of Oxford

The Lecture:

Through extensive writings and lectures at both academic and grassroots levels, Tariq Ramadan contributes to the debate on the issues of Muslims in the West and Islamic revival in the Muslim World. He emphazies the differences between religion and culture, which he believes are too often confused, arguing that citizenship and religion are separate concepts. He claims that there is no conflict between being both a Muslim and a European; a Muslim must accept the laws of his country.

The Lecturer:

Tariq Ramadan is a Professor of Contemporary Islamic Studies at Oxford University and is also the President of the European Muslim Network, a think-tank in Brussels. He holds an M.A. in Philosophy and French Literature and a Ph.D. in Arabic and Islamic Studies from the University of Geneva. In Cairo, Egypt, he received one-on-one intensive training in classic Islamic scholarship from Al-Azhar University scholars.

Online polls by the American journal Foreign Policy (2009 and 2010) and Prospect Magazine (2008) in Britain placed him among the world's most important public intellectuals. A recent Notre Dame University Press book by the eminent Catholic theologian, Gregory Baum, entitled The Theology of Tariq Ramadan, treats Ramadan as one of the most influential Muslim theologians in the world today and as a thinker wrestling with issues comparable to those engaged by the Second Vatican Council within the Catholic tradition.

Through his writings and lectures Tariq Ramadan has contributed to the debate on the issues of Muslims in the West and Islamic revival in the Muslim world. He is active at academic and grassroots levels. Recent publications include The Quest for Meaning, Developing a Philosophy of Pluralism (2010), What I Believe (2009), Radical Reform: Islamic Ethics and Liberation (2009) and Islam, the West and the Challenges of Modernity (2001).

Sponsors:

This lecture was co-sponsored by the IICAS Middle East Speaker Series, the Program for the Study of Religion, and the Department of Literature at UCSD.