Category: Essays & Articles

Cosmopolitanism in Western and Islamic Thought

AGYA workshop at the Department of Philosophy, Kuwait University.

On 1-2 December 2019, the international AGYA workshop aims to explore the meaning of cosmopolitanism in Western and Islamic traditions and will provide a forum to investigate the mutual influences in the intellectual history of the concept in different cultural and intellectual traditions.

The concept of cosmopolitanism has always played an important role in philosophical and theological texts of various cultures, including Arab, European, Indian or Persian cultures. In its core, the concept of cosmopolitanism defines all human beings as world citizens— ‘kosmopolites’ in Greek—who thus are all part of a single universal community. The concept of ‘universality’ or cosmopolitanism also roots in Islamic theology and philosophy: in the history of Islamic thought, universalism is based on the concept of a shared humanity and equality. The unity of world citizens transcends all cultural differences or political borders, based mostly on a shared notion of morality.

In the eighteenth century, a cosmopolitan was a person that was open-minded, led a sophisticated life-style, and liked to travel. In current language, these are still some characteristics we are referring to today, when naming someone a cosmopolitan. Nowadays, cosmopolitanism is receiving more scholarly attention again: in the context of globalization, new (communication) technologies, and increasing digitization, there is a need to reflect in philosophical terms on the new prospects for the individual to interact and communicate with his or her fellow world citizens.

The AGYA conference focuses on intercultural exchange and its influence on the construction of moral and cultural paradigms. This is a rather new approach, considering the history of the concept of cosmopolitanism and the many contemporary moral, socio-political, and economic definitions existing in parallel today.

Bringing philosophy to the public: The Theatre of Thought Project in Egypt (lecture in Berlin)

Theatre of Thought event in Cairo (2017)

I’ll be presenting a short talk on the Theatre of Thought project in Egypt and the ways in which philosophy can be brought to the public to address social problems.
The panel session starts at 3pm, 9 November 2019, at Freie Universität Berlin, Silberlaube Hörsaal 1a, as part of the AGYA conference that explores the place of humanities in Germany and the Arab world.


Bringing back common ground (lecture and debate in Brussels)

I will be giving a talk and participating in a debate before an audience of EU and MENA youth hosted by the Friends of Europe (FoE) and the Anna Lindh Euro-Mediterranean Foundation (ALF) on 4th and 5th November 2019 in Brussels.

“In an era in which we are facing global issues that demand quick and effective collective action, such as climate change, migration and growing inequalities, both politicians and citizens appear to be distracted and paralysed by polarisation. Trust in the rational and stable middle ground of deliberative party politics is disappearing, with people instead opting for strong emotions, populistic rhetoric and big personalities. Issues related to national identity, cultural values and ethnic origins have been prominent in the political debate worldwide, causing not only political division, but also cultural and social polarisation.

Many governments are unable to respond adequately to the growing social, ethnic and religious conflicts – or oftentimes even foment these tensions. Instead, antagonistic narratives seem to be the only way of conceiving the vote. Societal debate has been hijacked by the more extreme movements that instigate high-tension debates, in which more moderate voices and much needed debates about common concerns such as climate change are losing power and influence.

What is the glue binding us together for the future? What can be done to encourage moderate voices? How can we counter social and political polarisation?”

Berlin als Zentrum des arabischen Exils (A feature report on German TV)

A feature report on the Arab Berlin exile essay was aired on the Kulturzeit program on the German 3sat channel. Click here to watch the video.

“Berlin wird immer mehr zu einem Ort, an dem sich Künstler und Intellektuelle aus den arabischen Ländern zusammenfinden, um das Erbe ihrer Revolution zu retten.”

TV report on the Arab Berlin exile essay

A feature TV report Berlin als Zentrum des arabischen Exils (in German) on the Arab Berlin exile essay was aired on the Kulturzeit program on the German 3sat channel (17 September 2019). The video can be watched below.

“Berlin wird immer mehr zu einem Ort, an dem sich Künstler und Intellektuelle aus den arabischen Ländern zusammenfinden, um das Erbe ihrer Revolution zu retten.”

Exiled in your Room: Reframing Alienation and Rootlessness through the Language of Metaphor (workshop)

Osnabrück University – 10.30-11.30am, 5 August 2019

Edward Said wrote that exile is “the unhealable rift forced between a human being and a native place, between the self and its true home.” Additionally, exile transpires irrespective of one being banished from the homeland, as the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish once put it, “Exile is more than a geographical concept. You can be an exile in your homeland, in your own house, in a room.”

With this backdrop, the workshop will seek to crystalize the phenomenon of exile, its toxins and “antidotes,” by developing the language of metaphors that can add linkages between the individual and the public, individual and the narrative, individual and the world. Globally, the metaphor has come under assault by the forces of literalism allied with declining education standards, distraction as a modus operandi, and neoliberal modernity that not only has little patience for the poetical intangibles and non-metricised languages, but has discarded vision and meaning in favour of addition and acceleration that operates through consumer desires, individual anxieties, emotional manipulation, and false promises that repeatedly drag humans away from the realm of communal authenticity.

The metaphor when employed compellingly in language, can add depth to the dizziness of exile, inject a re-perception of social problems, furnish a re-analogisation of the world, and kindle a reconstruction of imagination capacities needed for political thinking that can aid in a type of discerning navigation through a political and moral quagmire.

The workshop is part of the “Refugees and Home-Making in Osnabrück” event that merges academia and art and will be held at Osnabrück University from 5th until 7th August 2019.

Visually mapping Czech philosopher Václav Havel’s political thought

I will be giving a workshop session on 19 July at Georg-August-Universität Göttingen on how to visually map Czech philosopher Václav Havel’s political thought into a working methodology and reconceptualisation of his line of thinking for specific milieus in today’s Arab cities. This is part of the third annual conference on Private Pieties: Mundane Islam and New forms of Muslim Religiosity that will explore methods and concepts in undersanding the changing role of the religious, civic, and secular in Muslim societies.