Student scientific conference Anthropology of Islam

On Thursday 25th of May, the Department of Near Eastern Studies held a Student scientific conference entitled Anthropology of Islam, which mainly addressed topics related to the current lived forms of this religion.

On Thursday 25th of May, the Department of Middle Eastern Studies hosted a student scientific conference entitled Anthropology of Islam, which mainly addressed current topics related to the lived forms of this religion. A conference of this type was held on the grounds of the Department for the first time this year, and we all deeply believe in its continuation.

After the opening speech by Mrs. Václava Tlili on the importance of the study of Islam from an anthropological perspective, the keynote speaker of the whole event Professor Ilyess Gouissem from the Department of Qur´an Studies and Exegesis at the University of Az-Zaytuna in Tunisia spoke about the Muslim perspective of Western studies of Islam, especially Qur´an itself. An equally interesting contribution was the lecture by another foreign guest, Mrs. Menna Ahmed Omar from the Department of Bohemian Studies at Ain Shams University in Cairo, whose aim was to present Egyptian proverbs originating from the Qur´an and Islamic tradition and their place in the daily life of Egyptian society. It is certainly worth noting that the contribution was introduced in fluent Czech and was refreshing for everyone present.

In other posts, we have already become more familiar with the research areas of students from the Department of Middle Eastern Studies. Mrs. Natalie Caruso took us to Muslim Italy and spoke very thoroughly and from her own experience about the specific position of the followers of Islam in this Mediterranean country. Following this, Mr. Michal Pečený led us to distant Iran and explained the demographic characteristics of its population in detail. Subsequently, we returned to the Czech Republic again with Mrs. Václava Tlili, whose effort was to bring to life the ethnological contribution of Prof. Alois Musil, who remains almost forgotten in Bohemia. The last contributions of Mrs. Faten Abdulla and Mr. Daniel Krejčí pointed out some aspects of the life of the Muslim youth in the West, as well as the characteristics of the Muslims of Kyrgyzstan.

The entire event was attended by teachers of the Department of Middle Eastern Studies. We thank them for their valuable feedbacks on the individual speeches.