The past decade has witnessed a remarkable surge of interest among both policy makers and academics into the effects that religion has on international aid and development. Within this broad field ‘religious NGOs’ or ‘Faith-Based Organizations’ (FBOs) have garnered considerable scholarly and professional attention, resulting in a flurry of surveys and mapping exercises, as well as a number of practitioner-oriented handbooks and toolkits aiming at integrating religion into development programming.

This conference brings together scholars working broadly in Ottoman and Mughal pasts to converse, consult, and present what ways of thinking and doing difference are recoverable to us. This workshop will take as its objective a grounded history of difference narrated in diverse textual and visual cultures. We aim to incorporate venues beyond the legal—histories, hagiographies, travel accounts, visual and material culture—into the discussions of the contemporary.

The Narrow Streets of Bourj Hammoud is a 72-minute experimental non-fiction film about a working-class suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, called Bourj Hammoud, made as a collaboration between anthropologist and filmmaker Joanne Nucho and Lebanese artist Rosy Kuftedjian.

Codifying the Law: The Case of the Medieval Islamic West

The Middle East Institute at Columbia University looks forward to hosting you at its final Sharīʿa Workshop for the spring semester on Thursday, April 27th. We welcome Professor Maribel Fierro who will lead attendees in a discussion on her paper: Codifying the Law: The Case of the Medieval Islamic West.

Please join the Middle East Institute for a book launch and lecture event with guests Max Weiss (Princeton Univ.) and Jens Hanssen (Univ. of Toronto), co-editors of the book Arabic Thought Beyond the Liberal Age: Towards an Intellectual History of the Nadha. Introductory remarks by Rashid Khalidi (Columbia Univ.).

Join the Middle East Institute and David Brophy (Columbia University) for a discussion on the life and work of Saʿid al-ʿAsali’, a Muslim scholar who moved between the Ottoman Empire and China in the first decades of the 20th centur

Join the Middle East Institute as a co-sponsor for this one-day conference to identify and discuss key methodological questions in the use of visual documents in an interdisciplinary manner, drawing from new research in the field of Late Ottoman history.

Join the Middle East Institute for another Brown Bag Lunch Series. This week's lecture "Fear of the Dark: Understanding Religious Diversity in Greece" will be led by our Mahdi Visiting Research Fellow Dr. Angeliki Ziaka of the University of Thessaloniki in Greece.

This one-day conference will bring together artists, academics, activists, community leaders, lawyers, journalists, targets of surveillance, and those charged with conducting said surveillance.

How, in the decades after the civil war, did an abstract ideal of peace give way to a distinct space occupied by diverse groups of experts in Lebanon and elsewhere in the Middle East? Based on ethnographic research with diplomats, NGO members, mediators, conflict resolution specialists and UN officials in Geneva, Beirut and New York City, I argue that the current policy regimes on peace-making and crisis prevention in the Arab World are based on moralized perceptions of political violence, which largely impede our understanding of the regions’ history and society...

Join Maison Française and the Middle East Institute for a lecture in French with author Sarga Moussa on: Le Mythe bédouin chez les voyageurs européens, ou la possibilité d’un autre orientalisme.  

Join the Middle East Institute for a special guest lecture by Sarga Moussa exploring the Suez Canal through French writers and travelers in Egypt in 1869.

This talk will begin medias maris – in the middle of the sea. Throughout the talk I show how this is a privileged vantage point from which we can re-think politics and theory, nature and humanity, today...

Join us for an afternoon with special guest Tariq Ramadan (Oxford University) joined by Brinkley Messick (Middle East Institute), Katherine Pratt Ewing (Columbia University), and Hasan Azad (Columbia University) as we look at the intimate interconnections among Muslims, Islam, and the West.

Islamic Law as a Discursive Tradition. Join the Middle East Institute for its Sharīʿa Workshop entitled: "Islamic Law As a Discursive Tradition" with a case study on court practices using the Islamic equivalent of "best interests of the child" legal principle. Our guest leading a discussion will be Dr. Ahmed Fekry Ibrahim of McGill University.

After an almost two hundred years of focusing on authors of Islam’s classical period (al-Kindi, al-Farabi, Avicenna etc.), the academic study of philosophy in Islam has finally moved toward the post-classical period, which begins in the 12th century...

The lecture will explore the state of domestic Turkish politics since the failed coup of 15/7/16, the constitutional amendment process and referendum and look into future scenarios on the domestic and international level.
 

Ottoman and Turkish Studies Seminar presents Salim Tamari Loyalty and Betrayal: Hashimites, Syrians, and Young Turks in Galipoli and Medina

Join us for a guest lecture by Dr. Ami Ayalon of Tel Aviv University on the topic of printing. Printing was adopted in the Arab countries in the nineteenth century and assumed mass proportions during the last half-century of Ottoman rule there. The talk will discuss the formative phase of that practice in the region and examine some of the problems and creative solutions in early Arab printing, publishing, and diffusion. 

In late November 1990, Fidel Castro invited three Iraqis for lunch at his place: along with Muhsin Jassim Al-Musawi, were the Iraqi ambassador and the Minister of Endowment. Fearing that Saddam Hussein would be driven and misled into a confrontation with the US, Castro was looking for the best method to communicate his thoughts without offending the other who would like to pose as a hero. Come join us for a fascinating lecture on this moment in history.

A discussion between Yadh Ben Achour, former President of the High Authority of the Revolution in Tunisia, Yasmine Ergas,Senior Lecturer in the Discipline of International and Public Affairs (SIPA), and Alfred Stepan, Wallace Sayre Professor of Government, on human rights in post-revolution Tunisia.

Professor Makdisi will present us a draft chapter entitled "Coexistence in an Age of Genocide: The Birth of the Ecumenical Nahda" from his new book project about the origins of sectarianism in the modern Middle East. The workshop is open to all, and consists of an informal discussion of pre-circulated works in progress. Co-sponsored by the Middle East Institute at Columbia University.