Jonathan Brown, a professor of Islamic studies and Muslim Christian understanding at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service in Washington, DC, will deliver two talks as part of the 2010-2011 York-Noor Lecture Series: Recent Publications on Islam and Muslim Societies.
The first lecture, “The Challenge of Speaking for the Prophet: Interpreting Muhammad’s Legacy”, will take place Sunday, Jan. 16, from 3 to 5pm at the Noor Cultural Centre, 123 Wynford Dr. (Don Valley Parkway and Eglinton Avenue) in Toronto.
The second, “What Really Happened? The Complex Question of Historical Criticism in the Early Islamic Period”, will take place Monday, Jan. 17, from 11:30 to 2:30pm in the Vanier Senior Common Room, 010 Vanier College, Keele campus.
Brown, the author of Hadith: Muhammad’s Legacy in the Medieval and Modern World (Oneworld Publications, 2009), has studied and conducted research in Egypt, Syria, Turkey, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Indonesia and Iran. He is also a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations in the US.
Right: Jonathan Brown
His current research interests include the history of forgery and historical criticism in Islamic civilization, comparison with the Western tradition, and modern conflicts between late Sunni traditionalism and Salafism in Islamic thought.
Brown’s book publications include The Canonization of al-Bukhari and Muslim: The Formation and Function of the Sunni Hadith Canon (Brill, 2007) and the forthcoming Muhammad: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press).
In addition, he has published articles in the fields of Hadith, Islamic law, Sufism, Arabic lexical theory and Pre-Islamic poetry and is the editor-in-chief of the Oxford Encyclopedia of Islamic Law.
For more information on the York-Noor Lecture Series, visit the Noor Cultural Centre website.