ORGANIZED BY: The East London Mosque and London Muslim Centre with The Centre for the Study of Religion, Conflict and Cooperation (London Metropolitan University).
A seminar examining recent policies and developments concerning British Muslims, the modalities of Muslim representation and the impact of policy decisions on extremism and securitisation, education, identity and Islamophobia. The seminar will also explore calling for a public discourse and policy approach towards British Muslims that is fair and just.
Featuring the release of Dr Shamim Miah’s new book, Muslims, Schooling and the Question of Self-Segregation.
Friday, 2nd October 2015 from 18:30 to 20:30 (BST)
The Seminar Room, London Muslim Centre, 46 Whitechapel Road, London, E11JQ
East London Mosque and London Muslim Centre invitation to:
An Audience with Arno Arr Michaelis IV – Former White Supremacist Leader
Arno Michaelis was a leader of a worldwide racist skinhead organisation, a reverend of a self-declared Racial Holy War, and lead singer of the hate-metal band Centurion, which sold 20,000 CDs by the mid-nineties and is still popular with racists today.
Thursday 5th November, 2015
6:30pm – London Muslim Centre, 46 Whitechapel Road, London E1
BETWEEN REVOLUTIONS, DEMOCRATIC TRANSITIONS AND NEW REALITIES
Thursday 7 June 2018
6pm-9pm
Central London
Speakers:
Dr Gillian Kennedy — Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, Department of Middle Eastern Studies, King’s College London; author, From Independence to Revolution – Egypt’s Islamists and the Contest for Power.
Courtney Freer — Research Officer at the Kuwait Programme, London School of Economics and Political Science
Dr Azzam Tamimi — Author and commentator, his books include Power-Sharing Islam (1993), Islam & Secularism in the Middle East (2000), Rachid Ghannouchi: a Democrat within Islamism (2001) and Hamas: Unwritten Chapters (2006).
Dr Barbara Zollner — Lecturer in Middle East Politics at Birkbeck, University of London. Author, The Muslim Brotherhood: Hasan al-Hudaybi and Ideology (2007).
Dr Maha Azzam — Formerly with Chatham House, she leads the Egyptian Revolutionary Council and was an advisor on the British Academy for Humanities and Social Sciences’ MENA panel.
Dr Anas Altikriti — CEO, The Cordoba Foundation
Monica Marks — Visiting Fellow, European Council on Foreign Relations.
THE CIRCUMVENTION OF THE RULE OF LAW, HUMAN RIGHTS AND FUNDAMENTAL FREEDOMS BY THE EGYPTIAN JUDICIARY
Wed 18 July 2018
6:30pm-8:30pm
Cavendish Square, London W1G Panel:
Ibrahim Halawa — In August 2013, 21-year-old Irishman Halawa spent more than four years in prison in Egypt and faced a mass trial with hundreds of others threatened with the death penalty. He was detained with three of his sisters, who were also tried (in absentia) and acquitted.
Drewery Dyke — is a Research Fellow at The Foreign Policy Centre. He was a Researcher for Amnesty International between 1999 and 2017, and has led work on Afghanistan, and the Middle East. He has contributed to other projects, including with Minority Rights Group and Transparency International.
Bill Law — is an award-winning journalist who joined the BBC in 1995 and since 2002 has reported extensively from the Middle East. In 2003 he was one of the first journalists to cover the beginnings of the insurgency that engulfed Iraq, and his documentary, The Gulf: Armed & Dangerous, aired in late 2010 anticipated the revolutions that became the Arab Spring.
Toby Cadman — is a Barrister and the Co-founder and Head of Guernica 37 International Justice Chambers in London. He specialises in international law, and the pursuit of justice through international accountability mechanisms such as the ICC, the African Commission on Human and Peoples Rights, the ICTY, and the Bosnian War Crimes Chamber.
Carl Buckley — Chambers Director at Guernica 37, is a Barrister with an established international practice, specialising in the UN system of protection, and the investigation of international human rights violations.
Moderator
Dr Anas Altikriti — is CEO and Founder of The Cordoba Foundation.
All welcome
Free Admission (copies of the Executive Summary of the report will be available to registered guests)
Do cosmopolitanism and religion stand in opposition with each other? To which extent are cosmopolitan ideas, practices and narratives meaningful to the religious experiences and affiliations of concrete individuals and groups? To which extent have religious communities made use of cosmopolitanism as a cultural resource that is channelled by institutional structures? Which media platforms are available to religious organizations and movements concerned with the promotion of cosmopolitan solidarity and ecumenical understanding at both local and transnational level?
Cosmopolitanism gains momentum both as a practice that is apparent in things that people do and say to positively engage with the ‘otherness of the other’, and as a moral ideal that emphasises both tolerance towards difference and the possibility of a more just world order. Religion is not often seen in connection to cosmopolitanism, a notion that is commonly equated to worldliness and secularism. In fact, some religious affiliations and practices are understood as bound to parochialism, tradition, and lack of tolerance. In the media, the debate on religion is often tied to public discourses about terrorism, security and freedom of expression and opinion in the public sphere. This is particularly significant when we consider the way in which Islam is publicly perceived in the western world as a highly institutionalized religion with a strong influence on the conduct of and collective identity of Muslim communities. The growing visibility of Muslim identity in the public sphere, through particular forms of attire, behaviour, and symbols, is seen as potentially fuelling xenophobia and ethnic conflict in collective imaginaries across the Western world. The continuing controversy over the public use of the headscarf in France, the 2005 affair over the publication of the Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, and the 2009 Swiss vote to ban new mosque minarets, are only a few recent examples of how particular religious symbols and practices make the assertion of Muslim identity more visible in the public sphere. The fact that fundamentalist Islam is being increasingly tied to global terrorism in the mass media has played a key role on stirring the perception of fundamentalist Islam as a threat to individual freedoms and peace. While there is a growing interest in the meanings of religion and secularism in both media and scholarly debates, the linkages between cosmopolitanism and religion only very recently received the attention of sociologists, anthropologists, political scientists and religious scholars concerned with the role of religion in public life. This is in part because particularistic attachments to a community of faith sit uneasily with the ethical universalism and secular ideals of justice and equality that underpin cosmopolitan discourses and perspectives. Yet, while religions divide social groups and ethnic communities, religions can also offer influential forms of transnational, cosmopolitan solidarity and play a key role in conflict resolution both locally and globally. In pursuing particular forms of ecumenical understanding, religious organizations have, through history, always dealt with problems and challenges concerning the question of the ‘inclusion of the other’, which is at the heart of characterizations of cosmopolitanism as an ethico-political outlook.
By bringing together leading scholars from religious studies, sociology and anthropology, this conference seeks to investigate the connection between religion and cosmopolitanism and the role of religion in the public sphere through the lens of sociological, anthropological and theological perspectives.
The Cordoba Foundation will be presenting a paper here on its experiences and thoughts for Cosmopolitanism
Do cosmopolitanism and religion stand in opposition with each other? To which extent are cosmopolitan ideas, practices and narratives meaningful to the religious experiences and affiliations of concrete individuals and groups? To which extent have religious communities made use of cosmopolitanism as a cultural resource that is channelled by institutional structures? Which media platforms are available to religious organizations and movements concerned with the promotion of cosmopolitan solidarity and ecumenical understanding at both local and transnational level?
Cosmopolitanism gains momentum both as a practice that is apparent in things that people do and say to positively engage with the ‘otherness of the other’, and as a moral ideal that emphasises both tolerance towards difference and the possibility of a more just world order. Religion is not often seen in connection to cosmopolitanism, a notion that is commonly equated to worldliness and secularism. In fact, some religious affiliations and practices are understood as bound to parochialism, tradition, and lack of tolerance. In the media, the debate on religion is often tied to public discourses about terrorism, security and freedom of expression and opinion in the public sphere. This is particularly significant when we consider the way in which Islam is publicly perceived in the western world as a highly institutionalized religion with a strong influence on the conduct of and collective identity of Muslim communities. The growing visibility of Muslim identity in the public sphere, through particular forms of attire, behaviour, and symbols, is seen as potentially fuelling xenophobia and ethnic conflict in collective imaginaries across the Western world. The continuing controversy over the public use of the headscarf in France, the 2005 affair over the publication of the Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, and the 2009 Swiss vote to ban new mosque minarets, are only a few recent examples of how particular religious symbols and practices make the assertion of Muslim identity more visible in the public sphere. The fact that fundamentalist Islam is being increasingly tied to global terrorism in the mass media has played a key role on stirring the perception of fundamentalist Islam as a threat to individual freedoms and peace. While there is a growing interest in the meanings of religion and secularism in both media and scholarly debates, the linkages between cosmopolitanism and religion only very recently received the attention of sociologists, anthropologists, political scientists and religious scholars concerned with the role of religion in public life. This is in part because particularistic attachments to a community of faith sit uneasily with the ethical universalism and secular ideals of justice and equality that underpin cosmopolitan discourses and perspectives. Yet, while religions divide social groups and ethnic communities, religions can also offer influential forms of transnational, cosmopolitan solidarity and play a key role in conflict resolution both locally and globally. In pursuing particular forms of ecumenical understanding, religious organizations have, through history, always dealt with problems and challenges concerning the question of the ‘inclusion of the other’, which is at the heart of characterizations of cosmopolitanism as an ethico-political outlook.
By bringing together leading scholars from religious studies, sociology and anthropology, this conference seeks to investigate the connection between religion and cosmopolitanism and the role of religion in the public sphere through the lens of sociological, anthropological and theological perspectives.
The Cordoba Foundation will be presenting a paper here on its experiences and thoughts for Cosmopolitanism
The Cordoba Foundation has been invited to a roundtable discussion with the Malaysian Prime Minister on ‘Modernity and Islam: The
Role of British Muslims in the Global Framework’
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