Events reports
Top: The speakers at the New York symposium: Sachiko Murata, William Chittick, Stephen Hirtenstein, Salman Bashier, Mohamed Haj Yousef
Below: Some of the audience at one presentation.
Bottom: The Riverside Church, New York
New York, USA. November 6th-7th 2009
"Islam, Sufism and the Heart of Compassion," Living the teachings of Ibn 'Arabi. Riverside Church, New York.
The Ibn 'Arabi conference which took place in New York in November 2009, "Islam, Sufism and the Heart of Compassion", was co-sponsored by the Ibn 'Arabi society and the New York Open Center. It was, by general acclaim, a great success – not only because of the number of attendees, nor because of the quality of the talks and recitals, but most of all because of the engaged and lively audience and the general atmosphere of appreciation.
The conference was held in the historic Riverside Church, a huge neo-gothic complex on the Hudson River, which has an august history of support for liberal causes and the civil rights movement. The Reverend Arnold Thomas gave a gracious welcoming statement.
Stephen Hirtenstein opened the conference on behalf of the Society on the Friday night and then introduced the first speaker, William Chittick, who spoke forcefully and eloquently on "The Anthropology of Compassion". Michael Sells, a surprise guest, followed with an introduction to the Tarjuman. Aaron Cass then recited poems from the Tarjuman in English, followed by Arabic recitations from Taoufiq Ben Amor. The evening finished with a performance by the Tarab Ensemble, which performed a classical Arabic piece with special emphasis on the Andalusi Muwashah and Sufi repertoire.
On the Saturday morning there were four more lectures: Stephen Hirtenstein, "The Mystic's Ka'ba. The Wisdom of the Heart", Mohammed Yousef, "The Treasure of Absolute Mercy", Sachiko Murata "Ibn 'Arabi in dialogue with the Confucian Tradition" and Salman Bashier "Between Annihilation and Subsistence". The talks were limited to 30-40 minutes with questions reserved until the afternoon. After lunch there were two workshop sessions with the speakers. The event finished at the Riverside with a final performance from Aaron Cass accompanied by Glenn Patcha on piano. This brought a serene and inspired end to the day.
In the evening Nacer Khemir's film "Bab' Aziz" was shown at Columbia University. This was attended both by attendees of the conference and Columbia students and provoked interesting questions. On the following day, the other two films in Nacer's trilogy were shown at Columbia.
This conference was planned over a period of 18 months, and was by far the largest event the Ibn 'Arabi Society in America has been involved with. There were almost 200 registrants, including members and friends of the Society on the East Coast. Many came from the Open Center mailing list via the extensive full colour brochure, which was distributed to 3,000, and the interviews with William Chittick and Mohammed Yousef broadcast on a local New York radio station. In addition, there were listings for the event on the websites of the Riverside Church, Columbia University, Sufi News and World Report, the Interfaith Center of New York, as well as various blogs.
Baku, Azerbaijan: October 9-11 2009
Top: A plenary session of the symposium.
Below: Papers were presented in less formal circumstances.
Bottom: A musical performance.
The international Ibn 'Arabi Symposium entitled "The East and the West – Spiritual Values, Scientific-Cultural Connections", was held in Baku, Azerbaijan, from October 9-11 2009. More than 50 international speakers took part by the invitation of Mahmud Kerimov, President of the National Academy of Sciences of Azerbaijan. The event was held at the Buta Palace Conference Hall, the Azerbaijan History Museum and the Nizami National Literature Museum.
In autumn 2008, a delegation came to Oxford to request the participation of the Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi Society in organizing a symposium in Baku in October 2009. Books and Journals were donated to the delegation by the Society, advice on the symposium was given.
Since the symposium marked the occasion of the 70th Anniversary of the birth of the prominent Azeri scholar, Orientalist, philosopher and thinker, Aida Imangulieva, a translation from Russian of her book entitled Gibran, Rihani and Naimy (East-West interactions in early twentieth-century Arab literature) was arranged by Stephen Hirtenstein especially for the event. As Dr. Afag Asadova, the leader of the delegation, comments in her introduction to the book:
The many political, economic, social and ecological problems facing the world today dictate the necessity and importance of the works and activity of such intellectuals as Aida Imangulieva. The solution to all such problems lies in the transformation of the cultural values of the world’s peoples, East and West, into universal values for all humanity.
It was therefore entirely fitting that Ibn 'Arabi’s work in particular was chosen to celebrate this grand occasion.
Among the international speakers were many well-known to members of the Society: Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Mahmud Erol Kilic, James W. Morris, Claude Addas, Denis Gril, Stephen Hirtenstein, Jane Clark, Cecilia Twinch, Bakri Aladdin, Mustafa Tahrali, Hojjetolislam Ghasem Kakaie, Paul Ballanfat and Victor Palleja de Bustinza to name but a few. We were pleased to meet many prominent Azeri and Russian scholars also. The Society’s chairman, Grenville Collins was invited to attend the conference to give welcoming and closing speeches.
The whole event was at the highest level, and was atteneded by the first lady of Azerbaijan and her sister. Since the symposium was extensively covered by the media, especially television, many essential ideas could be communicated to a wide audience as well as to the influential invited audience of government ministers, academics and other honoured guests who attended. Many cultural events were arranged for the speakers such as visits to the archeological site of Gobustan, the old walled city with its mosques and palaces, the Heydar Aliyev Foundation, a commemorative concert and the opera "Layla and Majnun".
The program of the conference can be seen at www.aidaimanguliyeva.com/en/
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia – June 2009
A one-day event on "Ibn 'Arabī: The Relevance of his Thought in the Quest for Sustainability" was held in Kuala Lumpur on June 24, 2009. It was jointly organised by the University of Malaya Centre for Civilisational Dialogue and the Cultural Counsellorship, Embassy of Iran, Malaysia. The theme of the conference was the basic philosophy and ideas of Ibn 'Arabī in the context of human development, and there was the intention to look at case-studies of the relevance of Ibn 'Arabī's thoughts today and in the contemporary world.
The following is taken from the original announcement of the event. There may have been some changes in the list of speakers who took finally part.
Introduction
Ibn 'Arabi (1165-1240) can be considered to be the greatest of all Muslim philosophers, if we understand philosophy in the broad, modern sense and not simply as the discipline of falsafa. He has been called al-Shaykh al-Akbar, the Greatest Master, a title that was understood to mean that no one else has been or will be able to unpack the multi-layered significance of the sources of the Islamic tradition with such detail and profundity. Ibn 'Arabi's writings remained unknown in the West until modern times, but they spread throughout the Islamic world within a century of his death. Some of his most well known works are the Fusus al-hikam ("The Ringstones of the Wisdom") and the Futuhat al makkiyya ("The Meccan Openings"). The implication of his thoughts for contemporary concerns have been addressed by many scholars and devotees especially through the Journal of the Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi Society, which has been published since 1983. Ibn 'Arabi's basic project is to map out the possibilities of human becoming, to clarify the distinction between haqq and batil – truth and falsehood, reality and unreality, right and wrong – and to point his readers toward perfection, that is, realization of the Real to the extent possible within the human capacity ('alâ qadr tâqat al-bahar).
Authors such as S.H. Nasr, Ervin Laszlo and Peter Russell elaborate in their writings how this has been the outcome of an alienation from nature resulting from a general loss of meaning, values and perspective. A spiritual awakening is needed for a consciousness revolution to occur. Only this will lead to changes in behaviour and real sustainability. Besides ethics, much is being said today about the importance of spiritual intelligence in human happiness. Ibn 'Arabi's very famous Fusus al-hikam (Bezels of Wisdom) is one example of how we might understand the source and mechanism for such intelligence a forgotten ingredient for the consciousness revolution.
Objectives
- To gather the results of research carried out by Iranian and Malaysian scholars on the works of Ibn Arabi
- To understand how the ideas of Ibn Arabi are relevant in some of today's concerns especially in the area of ethics and human spiritual development in the context of sustainability.
- To look at contemporary applications of Ibn Arabi's thoughts and ideas.
Participation
Participants will be representatives of the academia, students and all who are interested.
Speakers
Iran:
- Profesor Dr. Ayyatollah Sayyed Muhammad Khamenei
- Profesor Dr. Ali Syeikhul Islam
- Profesor Dr. Ghulamreza A'vaani
Malaysia:
- Emeritus Professor Datuk Dr. Osman Bakar (UM)
- Assoc. Profesor Dr. Mohd Fakhruddin Abdul Mukti (UM)
- Professor Dr. Zakaria Stapa (UKM)
- Professor Datin Dr. Azizan Baharuddin(UM)
- Professor Dr. Bukhari Lubis (UPSI)
- Dr. Mohd. Sani bin Badron (IKIM)
Themes to be discussed
- Basic philosophy and ideas of Ibn 'Arabi in the context of humandevelopment
- Malaysian and Iranian scholars' work and commentaries on Ibn 'Arabi.
- Case-studies of the relevance of Ibn 'Arabi's thoughts today and in the contemporary world.
Oxford – May 2009
Top: James Morris introduces Dr Sebastian Brock.
Below: The Linbury Building where the symposium was held.
Bottom: A film crew at work interviewing one of the speakers
The Society symposium held in Oxford in May 2009 was entitled "The Wisdom of the Heart". Speakers well known to members of the Society included James Morris, Mohamed Haj Yousef and Stephen Hirtenstein.
Because the theme could be recognized in almost any spiritual tradition, it was an opportunity to invite speakers who did not have a special knowledge of Ibn 'Arabi, but who could address the subject. The Society welcomed Sebastian Brock, an authority on the Syriac spiritual tradition, and Katia Holmes, a translator of Tibetan Buddhist texts, and interpreter for Kagyu lineage masters. Only five speakers were invited on this occasion, in order to provide more time for speaker-led seminars in the afternoons. A number of the talks can be heard as podcasts on the Society website (see Podcasts page). Another feature of the symposium was a performance by Vastearth Orchestra on Saturday evening, and on Sunday afternoon there was a showing at a local cinema of the film by Nacer Khemir called "Bab' Aziz" (The Prince who contemplated his soul). The director was present to answer questions at this first showing of the film in the United Kingdom.
Fes. The setting for an evening musical performance.
Fes Festival of Sufi Culture, April 2009.
The 3rd annual Fes Festival of Sufi Culture was held there from 18-25 April, 2009. The festival was initiated by Faouzi Skali, who is to speak at the Society's Symposium in Oxford in 2010. He said before this event, "Every day gives us a chance to explore a particular country, its spiritual practices, the masters who have lived there, the words which have nurtured it and the arts and culture which express the very essence of its being. So we shall go on a journey through Egypt, Syria, Palestine, France, Turkey, the countries of Africa and Spain." The week-long event provided a platform for expression by artists committed to the spiritual pursuit of artistic and intellectual creativity. But there was a further dimension in the series of forums held under the title, "A Soul for Globalisation" to enable discussion of the interactions between spiritual values and society.
Attending on behalf of the Society, David presented a paper called "A soul for globalisation: Ibn 'Arabi Manuscripts" and Jane presented images of pages from some key Ibn Arabi manuscripts and discussed the Society's digital archive project, which is collecting, preserving and cataloguing copies of historically important manuscripts of Ibn 'Arabi's works.
Cairo symposium lectures go online
Top: Speakers at the Cairo conference.
Below: Audience at the Cairo conference.
A conference under the title Ibn 'Arabi in Egypt – Confluence of East and West was held in Cairo on December 13-16, 2008. Video recordings of sessions on the 14th and 15th December have been put online on the conference website – see the Congress online links for the 14th December and the 15th December. At time of writing only part of the proceedings have been made available, so it is worth keeping an eye on their website. Most talks were in Arabic, a few in Spanish (Ramón Jiménez, Alfonso Carmona, Ana Crespo, Jesús Moreno), a few in English (Giuseppe Scatolin, Cecilia Twinch, Stephen Hirtenstein, Jane Clark and Mahmoud Kilic) and one (Claude Addas) in French. These were simultaneously translated during the conference and will be published in due course. Video images will available on the internet for two years. The congress gathered more than 25 recognised specialists from different countries. It was organised by National Archives and Library of Egypt (Dar al Kutub) and Al-Azhar University, together with the Spanish Embassy in Cairo, with the support of the British Council and the Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi Society among others.
Professor Mustafa Labib wrote:
The International Congress "Ibn 'Arabi in Egypt – Crossroads of East and West" was held in Cairo from 13th to 16th December 2008. It was organised by the Dar al-Kotob (National Library and Archives of Egypt), Al-Azhar University, and the Spanish Embassy. The contributors included some of the world's most eminent scholars in this field, also writers and artists. The aim was to bring diverse cultures together through Shaykh Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi's heritage. Papers were presented in Arabic, Spanish, French, and English. There were documentary films, an artistic exhibition, and a tour of historical sites in Ancient Cairo associated with Ibn 'Arabi. Two of his great works, the Futuhat and the Diwan al-Kabir, were republished by the Dar al-Kotob, together with an Arabic translation of A. Affifi's study, The Mystical Philosophy of Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi. The conference was extensively reported in the media. The response to the final recommendations of the conference was very interesting. Though widely welcomed, they occasioned an objection from a conservative member of the People's Assembly, who submitted a complaint to the Minister of Culture. Finally a decisive report on the remarkable impact of Ibn 'Arabi and Islamic Mysticism as a whole settled the matter. The support of the Shaykh Al-Azhar and Al-Mufti of Egypt was very important in giving religious legality to mysticism and, of course, to the conference.
Professor Soliman Elattar wrote:
The Ibn 'Arabi congress, celebrated in December 2008 in Cairo, Egypt, continues to arouse great interest in Egypt and some other Arab countries. That is because of the wide publicity given to the event by the media, especially the TV channels (10 TV stations) and the newspapers. People ask me in the street and by telephone how to know more about mysticism and Ibn 'Arabi. I find the same preoccupation among my undergraduate students at Cairo University. While this proves the importance of the media in the diffusion of ideas, it is very interesting to discover that mysticism represents a real need for Muslim society, as appears in the comments of many people: that it is the essential spirit of Islam which we need to know and practice. Intellectuals in Egypt and the other Arab countries, especially poets and novelists, have been inspired by mysticism in their works for more than three decades. This made them take an active interest in the conference, and study the materials presented to it, considering them as a gate which could open for them a new vision of Ibn 'Arabi and his spiritual world. They see it as a world full of creative ideas and the foundation of a new religious tolerance, as well as a deep knowledge of life, art, language, literature and philosophical wisdom.
Richard Twinch wrote:
The conference in Egypt in December was very successful. It was full with thirty nine talks, a wonderful concert, several fascinating film shows and a beautiful art exhibition as well as visits to the tombs of Dhul Nun, Ibn Farid and others on the outskirts of Cairo in the company of Egyptian author Gemal Ghitany.
The range of the talks was broad – encompassing not only the main theme "Ibn 'Arabi in Egypt – the Crossroads of East and West" but also a day on "Ibn 'Arabi and Poetry" and a day on "Ibn 'Arabi's Thought".
The conference was most hospitable. The main organisers: The Spanish Embassy, Dar el Kutub and al-Azhar University were unstinting in their welcome and generosity throughout. It was truly in the spirit of the Shaikh al Akbar and many friendships have been kindled. Special thanks also to The British Council whose early support was vital in bringing speakers from the UK and in their collaborative work. It was an excellent example of international cooperation all round.
Two events in Turkey – 2008
Top: Pablo Beneito introduces James Morris at the Istanbul conference.
Below: The Turkish Women's Association prepared a new cover for the tomb of Ibn 'Arabi in Damascus.
A symposium entitled "Ibn 'Arabi and the Modern Era" was held in Istanbul and Damascus in May, 2008. It brought together 17 speakers from ten countries, including many of the best-known scholars working in this field. Titles of papers included "The Wisdom of Animals", "From the knowledge of Oneness to Faith" and "The Alchemy of Happiness", illustrating the range of themes covered and the different approaches taken by Ibn 'Arabi.
The symposium was organized by the Istanbul branch of Turkkad, the Turkish Womens' Cultural Association, headed by Cemalnur Sargut.
She was quoted in a Turkish newspaper, saying that understanding Ibn 'Arabi would help shed light on the difficulties facing the 21st century by showing us how to love people without seeing differences, and how all of creation is in unity with the One. After three days in Istanbul, the symposium went to Damascus for the closing speeches and a visit to the tomb of Ibn 'Arabi.
Videos of the papers presented at the symposium can now be seen on YouTube among recordings placed there by Turkkad Istanbul. These include Claude Addas, Bakri Alauddin, Pablo Beneito Arias, M. Mustafa Çakmaklıoǧlu, Semih Ceyhan, William C. Chittick, Pilar Garrido Clemente, Karim Douglas S. Crow, Ekrem Demirli, Mahmut Erol Kılıç, Carl W. Ernst, Denis Gril, Suad el-Hakim, Stephen Hirtenstein, Ghasem Kakaie, Mohamed Mesbahi, James Morris, Sachiko Murata, Shahram Pazouki, Mustafa Tahralı
Interview with James Morris
William Chittick's paper has been published in Vol. 46 of the Society Journal, and is available as a podcast.
The tomb of Sadruddin Konevi, Konya, May 2008.
The 800th anniversary of the birth of Sadraddin Qunawi fell in 2008/2009. To celebrate this a symposium was held in Konya on May 20-22, 2008 entitled, "From past to present: Sadreddin-i Qunawi". It was organized under the auspices of the Meram Municipality, whose region includes the tomb of Sadraddin Qunawi.
This was the first international symposium devoted entirely to Sadraddin Qunawi, and it drew speakers and audience from Syria, Iran, Europe and Azerbaijan as well as Turkey. Most papers were in Turkish, Farsi or Arabic.
Paramadina, Jakarta
Paramadina, a prominent Islamic foundation in Jakarta, continues its Wednesday evenings course entitled "Study of Ibn 'Arabi's Fusus al-Hikam", which began in 2006. The teacher is Dr. Muhammad Baqir, a graduate of Madrasah Hujjatiyeh, an Islamic Seminary in Qom, Iran. On December 23, 2009, the study had reached the Twenty-Second Chapter of the Fusus, which is entitled "The Bezel of the Wisdom of Intimacy in the Word of Elias". There have been about 15 participants attending the course at every meeting.
"Counselling for the Soul" – Seminar
"Counselling for the Soul" – Seminar with Jane Clark at the Ojai Foundation, Ojai, California. June 21st 2009
Jane Clark brought some extremely interesting work from the Ruh al-Quds – both her own translations from the Arabic and a precis of Denis Gril's summary of the work in French – to this seminar in Ojai. The passages were exactly as the title implied: counseling for the soul and were quite personal, accessible and very moving.
Jane gave a 45 minute talk which was followed by two breakout groups studying particular passages, coming together at the end of the morning to compare notes. After lunch, there was a shorter talk and another two breakout discussion groups culminating in a final group discussion.
Thirteen people attended. Several had never studied Ibn 'Arabi before but almost all joined in, contributed, and seemed very pleased to be there.
The day was beautiful, the conversation good, in the sessions and over lunch, and most lingered afterwards to talk some more.
This seminar is a model the Society in America would like to repeat as it provided a level of engagement not always possible at a Symposium. We are extremely grateful to Jane Clark for her contribution and hope to hear much more from her on this work.
Jane Carroll