About this lecture
The region of the Middle/Near East and North Africa has witnessed numerous wars and armed conflicts since ancient times up to the present. Some were a result of territorial expansion by imperial states or nomadic invasions; others were triggered by local competition for resources between two or more countries of the region. Still others were intended or unintended outcomes of broader geopolitical confrontations, such as WWI and WWII and, later on, the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the Western world. Military technology evolved from the first use of camels and chariots to gunpowder and canon, more recently, also to chemical weapons. Slave armies and feudal military have been replaced by the mass conscripted armies of modern nation states. On the ideological plane, wars and military conflicts have been justified by reference to a wide variety of causes, from the “liberation” of the Holy Land from an “infidel” enemy to Europe’s “civilizing mission”; from establishing the homeland for a people that did not have one to stopping the proliferation of WMD, to the spread of nationalism, Socialism, Islamism, democracy, and so on.
Dr Abd al-Hakim Jackson is a respected scholar and one of the foremost authorities on Shariah and Islam in America. Dr. Jackson is the Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Near Eastern Studies, Visiting Professor of Law and Professor of Afro-American Studies at the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, MI). Dr. Jackson has authored several books including On the Boundaries of Theological Tolerance in Islam: Abu Hamid al-Ghazali’s Faysal al-Tafriqa (Oxford, 2002), the controversial Islam and the Blackamerican: Looking Towards the Third Resurrection (Oxford, 2005) and most recently Islam and the Problem of Black Suffering (Oxford, 2009). Dr. Jackson received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, PA) in 1991 and has taught at several institutions including the University of Texas (Austin, TX), Indiana University (Bloomington, IN) and Wayne State University (Detroit, MI). Dr. Jackson will join the faculty of the University of Southern California (Los Angeles, CA) in 2011. Dr. Jackson has served as the Executive Director of the Center of Arabic Study Abroad (Cairo, Egypt). Dr. Jackson is a co-founder, Core Scholar, and member of the Board of Trustees of the American Learning Institute for Muslims (ALIM), an academic institution where scholars, professionals, activists, artists, writers, and community leaders come together to develop strategies for the future of Islam in the modern world. Dr. Jackson specializes in teaching Additionally, Dr. Jackson is a former member of the Fiqh Council of North America, form Presdient of the Shari’ah Scholars’ Association of North America (SSANA) and a past trustee of the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT). He has contributed to several publications including Washington Post-Newsweek blog, On Faith, and the Huffington Post. Dr. Jackson is listed by the Religion Newsriters Foundation’s ReligionLink as among the top ten experts on Islam in America and was named among the 500 most influential Muslims in the world by the Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Center in Amman, Jordan and the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding.
All lectures by Abdal Hakim Jackson →