Global Islamic Studies, and Adab as Model of Muslim Refinement
This paper will address the importance of locating Islam poly-linguistically, poly-discursively, and poly-geographically. It will address the importance of Islamic Studies on a global scale, and pick the example of the genre of adab as a case for negotiating the public and the private, the legal and the ethical, the normative and the spiritual. The goal is a model of Muslim refinement that persists across Muslim societies down to our own age.
Biography
Omid Safi is a prominent Muslim public intellectual. He is the Director of the Duke Islamic Studies Center (http://islamicstudies.duke.edu), one of the leading institutions for research on Islam and promoting publicly accessible scholarship on Islam and Muslim communities worldwide. Omid is a professor of Islamic Studies, and specializes in contemporary Islamic thought and spirituality. Omid has been among the most frequently sought speakers on Islam in popular media, appearing frequently in the New York Times, Newsweek, Washington Post, PBS, NPR, NBC, BBC, CNN, and international media. He regularly blogs at On Being (http://www.onbeing.org). He leads an annual summer program in Turkey, Illuminated Tours (http://www.illuminatedtours.com)