High-quality translations of ancient Islamic texts provide an important bridge to understanding the current conflict in the Middle East, according to an international visiting scholar.
Professor Daniel C Peterson, one of the few scholars in the world today translating Islamic texts into English, will discuss his work and its significance at a public lecture at The University of Queensland on Tuesday, September 5.
To hear the address by Professor Daniel C Peterson, please go to our Podcast page.
He will also present the University with some translated texts from his Middle Eastern Text Initiative Project at Brigham Young University (BYU) in Provo, Utah – the largest private university in the United States and owned and operated by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Organised by UQ’s School of History, Philosophy, Religion and Classics, the free public lecture will be held between 10am and noon in The Innes Room within the Student Union Complex, Campbell Place, on the St Lucia campus.
Head of School Associate Professor Richard Hutch said Professor Peterson’s selection of the school as part of his global speaking itinerary reflected its international profile for research in the academic study of religion based on ancient scriptures.
The public lecture marks the first event in an ongoing research relationship planned between UQ and BYU where Professor Peterson is Professor of Islamic Studies and Arabic in the Department of Asian and Near Eastern Languages.
Professor Peterson said the public lecture would highlight the fact the vast majority of Westerners had little understanding of Islam and what drove its adherents.
“Unlike the Western World, events and symbols from the 7th and 8th Centuries still reverberate in the minds of all devoted Muslims and are not only relevant today but have a compulsive influence on the terror-stricken conflicts of the 21st Century,” Professor Peterson said.
In his lecture, Professor Peterson said he would explore the contemporary implications and inter-relationship between religion and violence, prospects for democracy in Islamic societies, orderly political transitions, the rule of law, the rights of ethnic and religious minorities and Islamic relationships with non-Muslim nations.
Professor Peterson’s first translation, The Incoherence of the Philosophers by 11th-century Muslim philosopher Abu-Hamid Muhammad Al-Ghazali, considered by many Muslims to be the greatest figure in Islam after Muhammad, was finished in 1997.
“The work is especially popular among the millions of Muslims who can not read Arabic,” Professor Peterson said.
Media: Professor Richard Hutch (3365 3288), Shirley Glaister at UQ Communications (3365 2049) or Chris Cooper of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (3395 8883 and 0404 797 595).
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