11 September 2006, Monday

A Welcome Gift to the Centre's Library Collection

The Centre was pleased to host a luncheon for Prof Daniel Peterson, from Brigham Young University, Utah. Guests included the Hon. Bob Kucera, US Consul General, Robin McClelland, as well as members of the University.

Professor Peterson holds a doctorate in medieval Islamic intellectual history from the University of California at Los Angeles. He has lectured on Islamic topics (and to Islamic groups) on every inhabited continent except South America and has resided for lengthy periods in both Jerusalem and Cairo. He is professor of Islamic Studies and Arabic in the Department of Asian and Near Eastern Languages at Brigham Young University (BYU) in Provo, Utah, the largest private university in the USA. He is also editor-in-chief of BYU's Middle Eastern Texts Initiative.

His visit to Australia and New Zealand in September is to enlighten opinion leaders from government, media, academic, business and religious fields on how a more informed understanding of the Islamic world can help avoid the "clash of civilisations" that some observers claim is at the door-step. At the luncheon, he discussed with great honesty the effort put into getting the Middle Eastern Texts Initiative off the ground. The Centre was gifted with a set of 10 books from the Islamic Translation Series. According to the Islamic Translations Series website:

"The Islamic Translation Series is designed not only to further scholarship in the study of Islamic philosophy, theology, and mysticism, but, by encouraging the translation of Islamic texts into the technical language of contemporary Western scholarship, to assist in the integration of Islamic studies into Western academia and to promote global perspectives in the disciplines to which it is devoted. Islamic civilization represents nearly fourteen centuries of intense intellectual activity, and believers in Islam number in the hundreds of millions. The texts that will appear in ITS are among the treasures of this great culture. But they are more than that. They are properly the inheritance of all the peoples of the world."

The Centre will proudly add the collection in its small but growing holdings.

Some photos from the event:

Hon. Bob Kucera and Prof Daniel Peterson.

Prof Peterson and guests at luncheon.

Prof Peterson and US Consul General Mrs Robin McClelland share a few words.