International Conference

Conception: Carlos Fraenkel, Potsdam; Zahiye Kundos and Roni Mann, Berlin; Asad Q. Ahmed, Berkeley
with: Katajun Amirpur, Cologne; Fouad Ben Ahmed, Rabat; Ahmad Dallal, Cairo; Irina Dumitrescu, Potsdam; Frank Griffel, Oxford; Sari Nusseibeh, Abu Dis; Yossef Schwartz, Tel Aviv

What is the place of reason in Islam? Nine hundred years after Ibn Rushd/Averroes’s birth, this conference asks why he became both the emblem of “rational Islam” and the exception supposedly proving Islam’s hostility to reason. It dismantles an Orientalist myth: Averroes as a lone freethinker after whom the Islamic world fell into darkness while philosophy and science flourished in the West. From Córdoba to contemporary Iran, it recovers rich histories of rational inquiry across philosophy, science, theology, law, and metaphysics, and challenges populist rhetoric that fuels anti-Muslim politics and frames wars as clashes between an enlightened West and fanatic Islam.

With a screening of Youssef Chahine’s 1997 biopic of Ibn Rushd, Al-Massir (Destiny).