Join the Kingston Community Library for Connected Histories in the Middle East and Beyond, an engaging and
timely presentation by John Voll, Professor of Islamic History and Associate Director
of the Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, at
Georgetown University on Thursday November 07 at 7:00 PM.
Crusades and jihads are frequently the center of discussions
about the connected histories of Muslims and Christians. People remember the
drama of terrorist attacks and medieval wars involving memorable people like
Richard the Lion Hearted and Saladin. However, wars and conflicts are not the
whole story. Muslims and Christians have many connected histories where they
have worked together to create significant positive contributions to world
history, and the connected histories are important in defining the identities
of Western and Middle Eastern societies. The glory of medieval Spain (or
al-Andalus) is an important example, along with the modern example of Muslim
life in America, as seen in the work of Eboo Patel. Often it is the
conflicts that are best known – people know more about the wars of the Crusades
than about the cooperative relations in Islamic Spain. Similarly, more is known
about the religious wars of the sixteenth century than about the amazing life
of Leo Africanus, who was a Muslim scholar in the court of a Renaissance Pope. The Bridging Cultures book collection
(28 books and films available at the Kingston Community Library) provides ways
of understanding the connected histories of Christians and Muslims that
emphasize the importance of the constructive dimensions. This presentation will
look at these resources and then discuss how contemporary events are shaped by
both the conflicts and the cooperations that are part of Christian-Muslim
relations in our contemporary world.
This will be the
Keynote Event for Kingston Community Library’s Bridging Cultures: Understanding the Middle East & What it Means
Today program series, a dynamic program series made possible by three
generous grants, two from both the American Library Association and National
Endowment for the Humanities and one from the New Hampshire Humanities Council.
The Kingston Community Library is located at 2 Library Lane,
Kingston, NH. (603) 642-3521, www.kingston-library.org
