Shii News – Imam Ali Seminar (London, 3 June, 2018)

SEMINAR TO COMMEMORATE THE MARTYRDOM OF IMAM ALI (a.s.)

SUNDAY 3rd JUNE 2018 – 2:00 PM

VENUE – RUDOLF STEINER HOUSE

35 PARK ROAD, LONDON NW1 6XT

Opposite Mumtaz Restaurant

Tube station: Baker Street

Chair: Farhana Mayer

Since attaining her BA /MA in Arabic with Islamic Studies from Pembroke College, Oxford, Farhana has held tertiary level teaching positions for Sufism at SOAS and at the Institute of Ismaili Studies, where she also taught Qur’an interpretation and was the Academic Coordinator of the Graduate Programme in Islamic Studies & Humanities. She is currently an Aziz Foundation scholar at Oxford University where she is engaged in interdisciplinary doctoral research in the fields of Qur’anic Studies, Muslim theology and jurisprudence. Farhana continues to be involved in community interfaith work and interdenominational ecumenism.

Gulamabbas Lakha

Empirical Research on Integrating Islam with Psychotherapy for Depression

Gulamabbas Murtaza Lakha is undertaking research and teaches Psychology of Religion at the University of Oxford. His doctorate focuses on how Islam could help to address depression in the UK Muslim population. This includes investigating how NHS psychotherapies can be adapted by harnessing cognitive therapies found in ʾakhlāq teachings and mindfulness techniques within dhikr practices. His previous research includes neuro imaging of dhikr; Islamic psychological teachings for anxiety and depression; and early Arabic commentaries on al-Ṣaḥīfa al-Sajjādiyya. He holds four master’s degrees spanning Psychology and Neuroscience, Theology, Islamic Studies, History and Arabic from Oxford and the Islamic College in London. His professional training was in financial economics and has twenty years of experience in the investment industry. His community work over the last decade includes lecturing on contemporary Islam across the UK and on Muslim TV channels, having also served as founding principal of the Oxford Madrasa.

Sajjad Rizvi

‘Created for Another Time’: Ethics and Spirituality in Imam Ali’s Advice to his Son

Sajjad Rizvi is Associate Professor of Islamic Intellectual History at the University of Exeter. Trained as a historian at Oxford and Cambridge, he has written extensively on Islamic thought in the early modern period focusing on the Safavid thinker Mullā Ṣadrā Shīrāzī. He spent a post-doctoral year as the first fellow in the new Quranic Studies unit at the Institute of Ismaili Studies in London and then taught for 2 years in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at the University of Bristol. His current projects include an intellectual history of philosophy in Iran and North India on the cusp of colonialism, an analysis of the noetics of Mullā Ṣadrā, and a short monograph on Mīr Dāmād. He has advised various government departments and private sector concerns on Iraq, Iran, Shiʿi Islam in the Gulf, and Islam in Britain and Europe.

AN OPEN INVITATION

PLEASE BE SEATED BY 2:00 PM

TAKE-AWAY IFTAR WILL BE PROVIDED

ORGANISER & SPONSOR: THE AHMED FAMILY – C/O MUHAMMADI TRUST (020 8452 1739)