Dear ChicagoBoyz readers: Please note this most excellent presentation, to be presented by the Mens’ Leadership Forum of Chicago.
Our first, distinguished, speaker for the season will be Mr. Robert C. Reilly.
(Stand by for announcements of future speakers.)
The presentation will be on November 11, 2011 at 7:30am at the University Club of Chicago. You can register here.
Mr. Reilly is the author of The Closing of the Muslim Mind: How Intellectual Suicide Created the Modern Islamist Crisis. See also his recent piece Will the Arab Spring turn into winter?.
I will be at this event and I hope some of our readers will be there as well.
I wish I were closer to Chicago. Part of the fuel for al Queda is the belief that the West has hindered their true potential – up to the 15th century I believe they had a fairly sophisticated technical society – with Damascus a main hub.
I admittedly don’t know a lot about Islam and its history but I would be curious as to what Mr Reilly would say to my contention that Wahhabism (17th century) – and its strict adherence is what have kept so many Muslim countries back.
Ask him if he has read The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright.
It is a fascinating read on the origins of radical Islam which, believe it or not, was started by an Egyptian exchange student in Greeley CO – 1948. (according to Write – with lots of documentation).
It is a must read for anyone wanting a better understanding of radical Islam.
We may be able to do a podcast of the talk. If so I will post it here.
I wish I could be there. “The Closed Circle: by Pryce Jones is the best I have found.
The “Translastion Movement” from which we have the classical Greek texts, minus any theater or philosophy, was conducted by Arabic speaking Greeks.
It is a myth to imagine that Arabs were interested in the Christian and Greek texts that were translated by their Greek slaves.
In Istanbul, we saw large panels of callugraphy being dismantled as Hagia Sophia is being converted to a museum. Behind those panels we found beautiful mosaics that has been protected and preserved by men who hoped it would not be 14 hundred
years before they were sees again.
And for those in the Washington, DC area:
JHU/APL Colloquium – http://www.jhuapl.edu/colloquium
TOPIC: The Unraveling: Pakistan in the Age of Jihad
SPEAKER: John R. Schmidt, George Washington University
DATE: Friday, October 28, 2011 at 2:00-3:00 PM
PLACE: Applied Physics Laboratory, Parsons Auditorium
Synopsis: Pakistan”•a nation founded as a homeland for South Asian Muslims, most of whom follow a tolerant, nonthreatening form of Islam”•has become a haven for al-Qaeda and domestic jihadist and sectarian groups. Who is to blame for this? The army generals and feudal politicians who run Pakistan fear the consequences of going after these groups and are hopeful that they can still be used to advance the state’s interests. Can these leaders save their country or will Pakistan become the first nuclear-armed jihadist state?
John R. Schmidt is a professorial lecturer at the George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs. During a 30-year career in the U.S. Foreign Service he served in senior positions at the Department of State and National Security Council, including as political counselor at the U.S. embassy in Islamabad in the three years leading up to 9/11. He has written extensively for leading foreign policy journals and online news magazines including Survival, National Interest, Washington Quarterly, American Interest, Orbis, and Daily Beast. The Unraveling: Pakistan in the Age of Jihad (Farrar, Straus and Giroux Press, 2011) is his first book.
Light refreshments are served in the lobby after the colloquium lecture
Videos of colloquia are viewable online at the colloquium archive website
The colloquium lectures are free open to the public