INAUGURAL LECTURE: Azza Karam on "Interreligious Engagement: Rethinking Social Cohesion in Troubled Times"

Inaugural lecture

The Network for Centers of Christian-Muslim Relations.

Please register for online prticipation.

News vom 10.01.2025

The Network for Centers of Christian-Muslim Relations

Cordially invites you to attend its inaugural online lecture on Christian-Muslim Relations

Professor Azza Karam

"Interreligious Engagement: Rethinking Social Cohesion in Troubled Times"

January 16, 2025, 14:00 CET

Please Register here for Zoom-Link: https://tally.so/r/m61aZP

Contact: secretary@nccmr.org

About the Lecture: What is interreligious engagement? What do we know about it in practice? Can it contribute to a socially cohesive world, in a time of social and cultural fragmentation? These are some of the questions we will be addressing, as we assess the main features of deeply divided societies and take a deep dive into what divides, and what unites, the diverse faiths. Through a dynamic dialogue, Prof Azza Karam will walk her audience through a discussion that highlights the weaknesses, and strengths, of interreligious engagement today. The dialogue is guided by the observation that identifying how different religious and cultural groups envision difference(s) is the first step to heal some of our social wounds and to close the rifts dividing our political space. Informed interreligious engagement -and not only interfaith dialogue- is the second and more challenging step to reach social cohesion and restore political peace.

Prof. Azza Karam is Founding President and CEO of Lead-Integrity - a global consultancy firm dedicated to serving the common good, through empowering women professionals, inspired by their faiths. She serves as a member of the Board of Trustees of a significant number of internationally recognized and world-class institutions. One-time president and CEO of the Women’s Learning Partnership, and Secretary General of the World Conference of Religions for Peace. Dr Karam has twenty-years’ experience working at the United Nations, where she coordinated the Arab Human Development Reports; co-founded and chaired the United Nations Interagency Task Force on Religion and Development, and founded and convened its Multi Faith Advisory Council and was Lead Facilitator for UN system-wide peer to peer “Strategic Learning Exchanges” on ‘Religion, Development and Diplomacy’. Dr Karam has taught in various universities, is widely published, and translated, into several languages. Laureate of multiple awards, most recently, granted a Doctorate in Humane Letters honoris causa, by John Cabot University, in Rome, Italy.

Ghassan El Masri, Dr. Phil

Research Associate

Research Center for Religious Diversity - Forschungsstelle für religiöse Vielfalt

Lehrstuhl für Bürgerliches Recht, Internationales Privatrecht und Rechtsvergleichung

Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nürnberg

Bismarckstraße 1, 91054 Erlangen

T. + 49 (0) 9131 85-22564

ghassan.masri@fau.de

Senior Fellow (non-resident)

Royal Institute for Inter-Faith Studies

Amman, Jordan

www.riifs.org