CIRE is a London-based research centre dedicated to research that will inform Islamic thought, Islamic sciences and Islamic education. It will bring together traditional Islamic scholarship and the mainstream academic world in areas such as Islamic studies, the humanities, social sciences and applied disciplines such as leadership and education.
The centre will organise and produce new knowledge through the sponsorship of original, high-quality research, the training of researchers, collaboration with colleagues and partner organisations, the dissemination of findings though seminars, conferences and publications, and ongoing monitoring of research impacts.
Muslims in the world today are in a totally new historical situation and a balance must be found between maintaining the authority of tradition, or isnad, and respecting the new circumstances in which the world operates; the text and the context.
Initiatives must come from within Muslim communities that have had extensive exposure to both traditional Islam, modern university-style education, and the realities of Muslim life in the 21st century. CIRE is uniquely placed to be able to bring together a highly experienced team with a shared history of traditional Islamic education and modern academic research. CIRE will be the only research centre based within a traditional Islamic seminary and it will engage academics and religious scholars alike.
Series 1 E1: Interpretation of the Mukataba Verse in Early Islamic History
Presentation of an academic paper followed by Q&A and discussion. The revolution in fundamental quantum physics and its finding that the existence of mind is woven into the fabric of reality.
Delivered by: Dr Ramon Harvey – from Aziz Foundation Lecturer in Islamic Studies at Ebrahim College
Series 1 E2: Anatomy of a Fatwa
Presentation of an academic paper followed by Q&A and discussion. Considering the determinants of legal reasoning in the modern age with a case study on prayer times from his book Shedding Light on the Dawn.
Delivered by: Dr Asim Yusuf
Series 1 E3: Classical Majalis of Adab and ‘Ilm: From the Jahli Period up to the ‘Abbasids
Presentation of an academic paper followed by Q&A and discussion. Ijtihad for the regeneration and development of Muslim communities and societies.
Delivered by: Shaykh Michael Mumisa
Series 1 E4: There was God and No Thing was with Him
Presentation of an academic paper followed by Q&A and discussion. In his magnum opus, Being and Time, Martin Hediegger makes the claim that ‘only as phenomenology is ontonology possible’. What does this mean and why should we be interested?
Delivered by: Dr Safaruk Z. Chowdhury
Series 1 E6: Quantum Theory and the Mind: Do Quantum Fields Control the Brain?
Presentation of an academic paper followed by Q&A and discussion. Assessing an important contemporary question of bioethics using a range of juristic and social scientific research.
Delivered by: Dr Asim Islam
Series 1 E7: The Sufi Retreat Phenomenon: An Anthropology
Presentation of an academic paper followed by Q&A and discussion. Presentation of an academic paper followed by Q&A and discussion. 9th and 10th century ‘Abbasid majalis in cities like baghdad as multi-discplinary and inter-disciplinary spaces for the development of diverse scholarly fields and literal practices.
Delivered by: Walaa Quisay
Series 1 E8: Things ARE as they appear: an introduction for Muslims to Heidegger’s existentialism
Presentation of an academic paper followed by Q&A and discussion. Analysis of Al-Ihkam fi tamyiz al-fatawa ‘an al-ahkam wa-tasarrufut al-qadi wa-l-imam.
Delivered by: Ibrahim Lawson