On November 11, Dr. Omar Hisham Altalib, an American scholar and a lecturer at the Institute of Knowledge Integration (Tbilisi, Georgia), delivered a lecture "Islam and Reform" as part of the IIIT lectures series for CIS countries, organized by the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT) and the Institute of Knowledge Integration (IKI).
During his lecture, Dr. Altalib noted that, first of all, it is necessary that reform was for the good. One cannot carry out a reform based on violence or dictatorship. The key to successful reform is love and peace.
Dr. Altalib highlighted the impact of the most prominent reformers of our time, founders of the International Institute of Islamic Thought, Dr. Ismail Raji al-Faruqi and his wife Lois Lamya al-Faruqi, Dr. Taha Jabir Alalwani, and Dr. Abdulhamid Abusulayman. They’ve made a lot of efforts improving Muslim ummah, including Islamization of knowledge.
According to Dr. Omar Altalib, it is not enough to know how to pray, fast or to give zakat, it is necessary to understand the reasons, why Islamic civilization was powerful in the past and why it declined. The problem of Muslims is that they even don’t know what is the Islamic art, laying in the foundations of Islamic civilization.
In the second part of the meeting, participants asked their questions and shared views on the importance of studying Islamic art, on the influences of Western civilization on the Islamic world, intercultural relations and the essence of reforms in general.
More than 90 participants from different countries, including Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Russia, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Turkey, and other, had registered to attend the lecture.
The recording of the lecture "Islam and Reform" is already available on the Institute of Knowledge Integration YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADOazuhCUVE).
The next lecture, by Dr. Elvira Kulieva (University of Freiburg, Germany), is scheduled for the end of November. Announcement of this lecture will be posted on the IIIT CIS lectures and the Institute of Knowledge Integration Facebook pages.
