Guest lecturer addresses "The Taliban vs. Islam"
Oct. 22, 2001
KALAMAZOO -- Dr. Hakan Yavuz, a frequent commentator in the Turkish media, will present "The Taliban vs. Islam: Politics and Religion in the Middle East," on Wednesday, Oct. 24, at Western Michigan University. The free public lecture begins at 7:30 p.m. in Room 2303 of Sangren Hall.
Yavuz studies Islamic conceptions of human rights, the politics of identity, and the impact of globalization on developing countries. He is an assistant professor of political science in the Middle East Center at the University of Utah, and is a 2001-02 Rockefeller Visiting Fellow at the Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame.
Yavuz is currently completing his book on the Nur movement of Turkey, which has branches in Central Asia, Bosnia, Albania, and Germany, a rapidly growing Islamist movement notable for its openness towards democracy and international standards of human rights. Yavuz is particularly interested in its implications for the evolution of modernist thinking in the Islamic world as a whole and for future relations between Islam and the West.
The visit and presentation by Yavuz are sponsored by the WMU Department of Comparative Religion, the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Languages, the Diether H. Haenicke Institute of International and Area Studies and the Institute of Government and Politics.
Media contact: Cheryl Roland, 616 387-8400, cheryl.roland@wmich.edu