A Taste of Rumi and Bach

Coleman Barks

Coleman Barks was born and raised in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and was educated at the University of North Carolina and the University of California at Berkeley. He taught poetry and creative writing at the University of Georgia for thirty years. He is the author of numerous Rumi translations and has been a student of Sufism since 1977. His work with Rumi was the subject of an hour-long segment in Bill Moyers's Language of Life series on PBS, and he is a featured poet and translator in Bill Moyers's poetry special, "Fooling with Words." Coleman Barks is the father of two grown children and the grandfather of four. He lives in Athens, Georgia. (From Barks' official website)

Ibn 'Arabi & Rumi - Teachings for the Modern World was presented by NEW YORK OPEN CENTER and the Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi Society.

Mohamad Tavakoli Targhi; Islam and the Contest of Faculties in Iran (2011)

Mohamad Tavakoli Targhi

Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi is Professor of History and Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations at the University of Toronto and the chair of the Department of Historical Studies at the University of Toronto-Mississauga. Since 2002 he has served as the Editor of Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, a Duke University Press journal, and has served on the editorial board of Iranian Studies, the Journal of the International Society for Iranian Studies.

His areas of specialization encompass Middle Eastern History, Modernity, Nationalism, Gender Studies, Orientalism, and Occidentalism. He is the author of two books, Refashioning Iran: Orientalism, Occidentalism and Nationalist Historiography (Palgrave, 2001) and Tajaddud-i Bumi [Vernacular Modernity] (in Persian, Nashr-i Tarikh, 2003). He has authored numerous articles: “The Homeless Texts of Persianate Modernity,” in Iran--Between Tradition and Modernity (Lexington Books, 2004); “Orientalist Studies and Its Amnesia,” in Antinomies of Modernity (Duke, 2002), “Eroticizing Europe,” in Society and Culture in Qajar Iran: (Mazda, 2002); “Women of the West Imagined,” in Identity Politics and Women (Westview Press, 1994); “From Patriotism to Matriotism: A Tropological Study of Iranian Nationalism, 1870-1909," International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies (2002), “Inventing Modernity, Borrowing Modernity,” Iran Nameh (2003).

Born and raised in the “navel of Tehran,” Iran, Professor Tavakoli is the recipient of two Outstanding Teacher awards from Illinois State University (1996 and 2001); a Research Initiative Award (1992); and visiting fellowships at St. Antony’s College, Oxford University (1998), the Center for Historical Studies Jawaharlal Nehru University (New Delhi, 1992-93); and Harvard University (1991-92).

He has initiated numerous conferences and workshops on topical issues pertaining to the Middle East, and has encouraged the active involvement of student associations in the organization of scholarly events and community outreach programs. He holds a BA in Political Science and an MA in History from the University of Iowa, and a PhD in History from the University of Chicago.  (From Tavakoli's official website)

"Rencontre avic Aramech Dusdar" by Ali Amini and Farhad Farhadi, 2000 (Farsi with French subtitles)

Aramesh Dusdar

Aramesh Dustdar (born in Tehran) is an Iranian philosopher, writer, scholar and a former philosophy lecturer at Tehran University.Dustdar received a PhD degree in philosophy from University of Bonn. He is known in Iran as a secular Heideggerian philosopher (in contrast to Reza Davari Ardakani who is a religious Heideggerian philosopher). (From Wikipedia)


"[Aramesh Dusdar] belongs to the same generation of Tehran's academic "philosophers" in the early 1970's, people like Shayegan, Davari, Enayat, Nasr and a few minor figures around them, who were thinking within the same problematic discourse that Ahmad Fardid (via Al-e-Ahmad) laid its parameters out: the destiny of our culture against the onslaught of Western civilization; questions of History (capital H), faith, modern science and technology and what lays ahead, our future in the world. Aramesh Dustdar was the black sheep of the gang, the antichrist among the gatekeepers of Hekmat-e-Elaahi.

Then something strange happened which is not dissimilar to Germany in the 30s. Amazing parallels! History took a grave turn and everybody got caught up in its tremors. We don't get in to that story but one immediate result was a moratorium on thinking, the kind which had just started.

Regardless of what we think of these individuals and the weight and caliber of their thinking (I happen to think the majority were ersatz-philosophers), we should grant them that they were the first group of post-Mashrootiat intellectuals who could be called "thinkers" or "philosophers." All the others before them were Adeebs, Mohaghgheghs, encyclopedists and Alems, and of course a mass of journalists that we can loosely call our modern intelligentsia.

But among that crew of thinkers, Aramesh Dustdar was the oddball; he did not have the nativist peasant attitude sporting a tassbih, clearing his throat with verses of Hafiz (or hooey from Sepehri) every step of the way, and he certainly was not a dilettante-tourist-philoshophe with Parisian accent searching Illuminations from the East. He was a true German mandarin of strong atheistic stripes, a heavy-weight. And he was bent to grapple with all those mystifications generally known as farhang-e Irani-Islami. Only one person before him had done something similar, a serious wake-up call, little understood up until even today: a man named Ali Esfanidari, otherwise known as Nima Youshij." (From "Demanding criticism" by Abdee Kalantari)

Karen Armstrong: Ancient Iran and Its Links With Us

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Karen Armstrong

Karen Armstrong is a British author and commentator who is the author of twelve books on comparative religion. A former Roman Catholic nun, she went from a conservative to a more liberal and mystical faith. Armstrong first rose to prominence in 1993 with her book, A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, an international best seller that is now required reading in many theology courses. Her work focuses on commonalities of the major religions, such as the importance, in many, of compassion or "The Golden Rule". (From Wikipedia) 

In her lecture here, Karen Armstrong talks about the teachings of Zoroaster and the impact of Persian Zoroastrianism on Abrahamic religions, Judeism, Christianity, and Islam. 

Henry Corbin; Shiisme et Ismaélisme (French)

Henry Corbin

Henry Corbin (14 April 1903 - 7 October 1978) was a philosopher, theologian and professor of Islamic Studies at the Sorbonne in Paris, France.

Corbin was born in Paris in April 1903. As a boy he revealed the profound sensitivity to music so evident in his work. Although he was Protestant by birth, he was educated in the Catholic tradition and at the age of 19 received a certificate in Scholastic philosophy from the Catholic Institute of Paris. Three years later he took his "licence de philosophie" under the great Thomist Étienne Gilson. In 1928 he encountered the formidable Louis Massignon, director of Islamic studies at the Sorbonne, and it was he who introduced Corbin to the writings of Suhrawardi, the 12th century Persian mystic and philosopher whose work was to profoundly affect the course of Corbin’s life. The stage was then set for a personal drama that has deep significance for understanding those cultures whose roots lie in both ancient Greece and in the prophetic religions of the Near East reaching all the way back to Zoroaster. Years later Corbin said “through my meeting with Suhrawardi, my spiritual destiny for the passage through this world was sealed. Platonism, expressed in terms of the Zoroastrian angelology of ancient Persia, illuminated the path that I was seeking.”

Corbin is responsible for redirecting the study of Islamic philosophy as a whole. In his Histoire de la philosophie islamique (1964), he disproved the common view that philosophy among the Muslims came to an end after Ibn Rushd, demonstrating rather that a lively philosophical activity persisted in the eastern Muslim world – especially Iran – and continues to our own day. (From Wikipedia)

Abdolkarim Soroush: "Shi'ism in Need of Reform"



Dr. Abdolkarim Soroush



Abdolkarim Soroush (عبدالكريم سروش), born Hosein Haj Faraj Dabbagh (1945-; Persian: حسين حاج فرج دباغ), is an Iranian thinker, reformer, Rumi scholar and a former professor at the University of Tehran. He is arguably the most influential figure in religious intellectual movement in Iran. Professor Soroush is currently a visiting scholar at the University of Maryland in College Park, MD. He was also affiliated with other prestigious institutions, including Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Columbia, the Leiden based International Institute for the Study of Islam in the Modern World (ISIM) and the Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin. Soroush idea's, founded on Relativism prompted both supporters and critics to compare his role in reforming Islam to that of Martin Luther in reforming Christianity. (From Wikipedia).

Science and Islam (BBC FOUR)

Seyyed Hossein Nasr Talks to Dennis Wholey about Islam

Seyyed Hossein Nasr (Persian: سید حسین نصر) (born April 7, 1933 in Tehran) is an Iranian University Professor of Islamic studies at George Washington University, and a prominent Islamic philosopher. He is the author of many scholarly books and articles.

Nasr is a Muslim Persian philosopher and renowned scholar of comparative religion, a lifelong student and follower of Frithjof Schuon, and writes in the fields of Islamic esoterism, Sufism, philosophy of science, and metaphysics.

Nasr is the first Muslim to deliver the prestigious Gifford Lectures, and in year 2000, a volume was devoted to him in the Library of Living Philosophers.

Professor Nasr speaks and writes based on the doctrine and the viewpoints of the perennial philosophy on subjects such as philosophy, religion, spirituality, music, art, architecture, science, literature, civilizational dialogues, and the natural environment. He also wrote two books of poetry (namely Poems of the Way and The Pilgrimage of Life and the Wisdom of Rumi), and has been even described as a 'polymath'.

Nasr speaks Persian, English, French, German, Spanish and Arabic fluently. (From Wikipedia)

Watch the video here.



Islam: Empire of Faith

Islam: Empire of Faith is a documentary series, made in 2000, that details the history of Islam, from the birth of the Islamic Prophet, Muhammad to the Ottoman Empire. It is narrated by Ben Kingsley and is available as three DVDs or two video volumes in NTSC format.

The first episode deals with the life of Muhammad, the second with the early Caliphates, Crusades, and Mongol invasion, and the third with the Ottoman Empire and Safavid dynasty. (From Wikipedia)