On March 27th, we signed a four-year (2018-2022), 500,000 € contract with the European Delegation in Egypt to finance activities with several partners:  the Institute of Manuscripts of the Arab League in Cairo, Al-Azhar University, and the French Institute of Egypt. This money will finance several activities whose common goal is to provide students, researchers, and teachers of Islamic studies the tools that will allow them to study Islam from a critical perspective.

Installation of AlKindi software at the Institute of Arabic Manuscripts (IMA): the Institute of Manuscripts owns a collection of microfilms of Arabic manuscripts from around the world, and the IDEO owns a collection of printed works, including more than 20,000 texts of the classical Arab heritage. By merging our databases, our catalog will thus give researchers access, for any given text, to the references of the editions that the IDEO possesses and to the references of the manuscripts listed by the IMA. We will enrich the editorial history of these texts and facilitate research in Islamic studies.

The IDEO and its partners in Egypt, with the support of the European Union, wish to assist in the training of the new generation of specialists in Islam who will work closely with the ongoing international academic work, by means of the French language, and make available to all researchers an online reference database in Islamic studies.

More information on: Dominican Institute for Oriental Studies

Dr al-Tayyeb in his lecture on “The Responsibility of Religious Leaders in Building World Peace” urged Christians and Muslims “to follow our path as believers from the different parts of the world, in order to realize humanity’s hope to overcome the uncivilized obstacles that could bring us back to the era of darkness, ignorance and the law of the jungle.”

Al-Tayyeb’s lecture followed the two-day dialogue and planning sessions of the Muslim Council of Elders with a delegation from the World Council of Churches (WCC) in Geneva. It took place during 70th anniversary celebrations at the Ecumenical Institute, Bossey, Switzerland, on 1 October. The Grand Imam’s visit, which he and the WCC general secretary, Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit, called “historic and unprecedented,” came two months after a jointly organized youth seminar in Al-Azhar.

The lecture, before an audience of about 150 persons, included a radical critique of the reigning powers and secular assumptions of the present world order. Even if nonreligious factors “can realize modernity, technological and scientific development,” the Grand Imam said, “they have failed to grant humankind a life of security, stability and peace.”

Al-Tayyeb particularly criticized widespread cynicism and secularism. The modern era, he said, marked by a loss of religious values, has been scorched by the prevalence of armed conflict (including two world wars), which is fueled by the arms trade. Its geopolitical configuration “led to the happiness of a limited category of individuals at great cost to the majority of people, living in extreme poverty.”

Source: The World Council of Churches