Upcoming Worldwide Events and Symposiums

September 6, 2025

Life is but a Dream: Ibn ‘Arabi on Dreams and Human Agency

Cyrus Ali Zargar

Our third online seminar of 2025 is entitled “Life is but a Dream: Ibn ‘Arabi on Dreams and Human Agency” will take place on 6th September, 2025 at 4:00 – 5:30 PM (London time). The presentation by Cyrus Ali Zargar will be followed by time for questions.

* Booking opens soon. Members will receive details by email, otherwise look for information here.

About the subject matter

Cyrus writes: Dreams and their interpretation matter deeply to Ibn ‘Arabi, as they have historically in Muslim life and practice. Dreams illuminate our understanding of the relationship between the unseen realm, the sensory world, and the mediating role of imagination. One of Ibn ‘Arabi’s key insights is that the interpretation of happenings and symbols—especially in dreams—can actually bring certain events into being in the sensory world. This gives the dream interpreter a powerful and creative role: rather than merely decoding signs, the interpreter gives form to a message from the unseen, shaping reality itself. Even when the dreamer conveys something false, the act of interpreting that dream has the potential to alter that which is external to the interpreter. Dreams, then, help us think about human agency and the power of ideas. In Ibn ‘Arabi’s view, interpretation is not just a matter of perspective—each act of interpretation actively participates in the creation of the world, provided the interpreter has some knowledge of what lies beyond the senses.

The speaker

Cyrus Ali Zargar is the Al-Ghazali Distinguished Professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Central Florida. A scholar of Classical Sufism, Islamic philosophy, and Arabic and Persian Sufi literature, Zargar explores the intersections of ethics, aesthetics and spirituality in Islamic thought. He has authored several acclaimed works, including The Polished Mirror and Sufi Aesthetics. His latest books, Religion of Love and The Ethics of Karbala, delve into Sufi poetics and Islamic virtue ethics.

Admission & Tickets

Society members enjoy free admission but must register. Non-members can buy tickets for £10.00 each.

If you are interested in joining the Society to receive benefits like the Society’s Journal, newsletters, and free admission to online events, please visit: https://ibnarabisociety.org/s-membership-uk/

We offer a limited number of tickets at a subsidised rate of £5.00 for those with low incomes. A select number of complimentary tickets may be available upon request. To apply or for further inquiries, please contact: events.uk@ibnarabisociety.org

To register

Booking on Eventbrite will open in the next few days. Please note: registration closes 24 hours before the event begins.

July 2025

MIAS Education Programme – forthcoming online events

A Spiritual Genius for Our Times: Ibn ‘Arabi in Context

With Yafiah Katherine Randall, Celia Salazar, and Wafa Al-Turk

Engage with Ibn ‘Arabi’s teachings through the cultural, religious, and philosophical milieu in which he lived, travelled, and wrote. Readings include his accounts of conversion, encounters with mystics and philosophers, and powerful visions, inviting reflection on how his insights speak to our lives today.

Date: 14 October – 18 November 2025
Time: Tuesdays, 5:30–7:00 pm (UK time) | 6 weeks

The Divine Feminine and Sacred Eros: Feminism in the Teachings of Ibn al-‘Arabi

With Hany T. Ibrahim

Explore a vital and long-overlooked dimension of Ibn ‘Arabi’s teachings: the sacred feminine as a principle of divine manifestation. Centred on the Fusus al-Hikam and related writings, this course reflects on figures such as Hawwa’, Asiya, Maryam, Khadija, and Fatima as symbolic expressions of emergence, veiling, and resistance.

Date: 13 January – 10 February 2026
Time: Tuesdays, 5:30–7:00 pm (UK time) | 6 weeks

Halting Between Vision and Word: Readings in the Mawaqif of ‘Abd al-Jabbar al-Niffari

With Angela Jaffray

This course explores the Mawaqif (Haltings) of the 10th-century mystic al-Niffari, whose visionary writings profoundly influenced the young Ibn ‘Arabi. We will read selections from the Haltings, alongside related texts by the Shaykh al-Akbar, to reflect on the barzakhi nature of spiritual pause: moments of radical stillness and divine address. Sessions will draw on a new English translation that seeks to restore the immediacy and directness of Niffari’s original speech.

Date: 7 April – 5 May 2026
Time: Tuesdays, 5:30–7:00 pm (UK time) | 6 weeks

March 2024

Young Writer Award 2023 – Prize winner

We are pleased to announce that the winner of the 2023 MIAS Young Writers Award is Nur Ahmad, currently a PhD candidate at the University of Leiden. This is the fifth time that the Society has run this competition, which gives an award (this year $1500) for the best essay written by a young scholar under the age of 35 on a theme related to Ibn ‘Arabi or his legacy.

The award was judged by three prominent Ibn ‘Arabi scholars – Professor Michael Sells of the University of Chicago; Dr Aydogan Kars of Monash University, Australia; and Dr Angela Jaffray, who will be best-known to members of the Society for her translations of Ibn ‘Arabi’s works, The Universal Tree and the Four Birds (Anqa Publishing, 2007) and The Secrets of Voyaging (Anqa Publishing, 2015). Many thanks to them for the time and attention they devoted to task of choosing a winner out the eight excellent entries that we received.

The winning essay is entitled ‘Akbarian Hermeneutics in pre-Modern Javanese Literature’. As the title suggests, this is an exploration of Sufi Quranic exegesis in Javanese culture for which, as Ahmad explains, Ibn ‘Arabi’s ideas formed the predominant framework. The judges felt that this is a ground-breaking piece of work, exploring a previously little-known area of study and exhibiting excellent scholarship based on hitherto unstudied sources.

Other entries are also thought worthy of mention. ‘Highly Commended’ are Elif Emirahmetoglu for her essay: ‘The Human Self and Personhood in Akbarīan Sufism and Chinese Buddhism’, which again, breaks new ground in its detailed comparison between these two highly sophisticated traditions; and Sophie Tyser for her essay ‘The World, Man and Ritual Prayer according to Ibn al-ʿArabī’ for its thorough and comprehensive exposition on Ibn ‘Arabi’s understanding of prayer. ‘Commended’ is Farah Akhtar for ‘Cosmos as Revelation: Reason, Imagination, and the Foundations of Ibn ‘Arabī’s Scriptural Hermeneutics’. All four of these essays will be submitted to the Society journal for consideration for publication.

Many thanks to all those who sent in submissions to the award. The hard work and thought that went into all the essays is much appreciated, and it is great to know that there are such excellent young scholars working on Ibn ‘Arabi’s heritage. It bodes very well for the future of Akbarian studies.

Jane Clark

About the young writers

Nur Ahmad is currently a PhD student of Islamic philosophy at Leiden University. His PhD research is a study of Fayḍ al-Raḥmān fī Tarjama Tafsīr Kalām Mālik al-Dayyān (“The Grace of the Merciful in the Interpretative Translation of the Words of the King and the Judge”), a Javanese Ṣūfī tafsīr by Muḥammad Ṣāliḥ al-Samārānī (c. 1820-1903). He argues that this tafsīr points to the shift in the intellectual world of Java at the end of the nineteenth century. He has had a lifelong interest in Ṣūfi thought in Javanese traditional literature and its popular expressions in lived traditions of Sufism in Java. Ahmad’s academic pursuits in the field of Sufism in Java are also motivated by the teaching position he has at Walisongo’s State Islamic University (UIN Walisongo), Semarang, Indonesia. As the chairman (2024-2026) of the Netherlands Branch Nahdlatul Ulama, an Islamic traditional organization, he makes an effort to manifest his interest in Javanese thought and poetry in popular forms, such as working together with Javanese traditional artists in the adaptation of Javanese Ṣūfī poetry into sacred dances and songs.

Elif Emirahmetoğlu is a research assistant at the Berlin Institute of Islamic Theology, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Recently, she submitted her PhD thesis, which compared the concept of human beings in Ibn al-‘Arabī (d. 1240) and Shinran Shōnin (d. 1263). Her research interests include Sufism, Islamic philosophy, Buddhism, comparative philosophy, and comparative mysticism. She is currently preparing for her postdoctoral project to explore various dimensions of human subjectivity in classical and post-classical Islamic anthropologies, and aims to reinterpret these perspectives with philosophical discussions on human subjectivity in the 20th and 21st centuries which have taken recourse to German idealism.

Sophie Tyser obtained her doctorate in Islamic studies in 2022 from the École Pratique des Hautes Études (Paris) in France. Her doctoral thesis, entitled ‘In The Horizons and Within Themselves’ : Man, The World and The Revelation in The Teaching of Ibn al-ʿArabī, focuses on the micro-macrocosmic imbrications in the work of the shaykh al-akbar. Since 2022 she has taught Arabic language and literature at the University of Turin in Italy.

Farah Akhtar is a graduate of the M.Div program at the University of Chicago’s Divinity School where she focused on Qur’anic hermeneutics and constructive Islamic theology. Her research interests include examining the literary form and exegetical function of metaphysical literature in the post-classical period and their significance to understanding the life of the Qur’an in Muslim societies. She is also interested in conceptions and interpretations of scripture in Indo-Persian mystical and philosophical poetry, with specific reference to the cosmos and existence. Prior to graduate study, Farah lived in Amman, New York and Lahore, studying Arabic, Persian and various Islamic texts in informal settings, including writings of Said Nursi. She is currently pursuing a doctoral degree in Islamic Studies at the University of Chicago.