Seminar on Islamic Art and Ethics, Oxford

Ruh was invited to participate in a detailed closed-seminar on Islamic Art and Ethics, having written a response to a paper by Islamic Scholar on the same topic. An artist’s perspective was important so as to ensure there was a beneficial discourse and understanding. Also in attendance was Zarqa Nawaz of Little Mosque on the Prairie and renowned Islamic scholars.

The Center for Islamic Legislation and Ethics (CILE), member of Qatar Faculty of Islamic Studies at Qatar Foundation, held a research seminar entitled: “Arts and Ethics”, between April 30th and May2th, 2013 in the Middle East Center in Oxford University, UK.

This was CILE’s second seminar after a “Bioethics” seminar, all within in a serie that gather both scholars of the Islamic Law/Text and “scholars of the context” in one forum. The objective of this setup is to tackle critical issues of the day from both angels, namely, the Islamic jurisprudence and social sciences. CILE is active in a number of fields, such as, methodology, bioethics, environment, politics, food, psychology, media, arts, economics, education and gender studies.

The seminar aimed at answering two basic questions:

1) What is Islamic Art?
2) What are the ethical limits of Art?

The seminar’s participants included: Sheikh Dr Abdallah al Judai, Vice President of the European Council for Fatwa and Research; Sheikh Dr Larbi Becheri, Professor at the College of Islamic Studies in France; Sheikh Dr Ali Al Omari, the renowned Islamic speaker and writer; Sheikh Essam Tallema; the well known Azhari scholar; Dr Jonas Otterbek from Lund University in Sweden; Canadian script writer and film maker Zarqa Nawaz; and visual artist Ruh Al-Alam, from the UK.