Conference The Wise Fool: Asceticism on Cross-Roads of Islam and Christianity

On Thursday 4 and Friday 5 February a conference on Asceticism on Cross-Roads of Islam and Christianity will be organized by dr. Asghar Seyed Gohrab, in co-operation with LUCIS, LUF, LIAS and the Scaliger Institute in Leiden University Library.

In the last decades, Islam has increasingly been portrayed in the West as a direct opposite of Christianity with little attempt to examine the rich intellectual and spiritual interaction between the two religions. The aim of this international conference is to address asceticism, one of the central concepts in both Islam and Christianity. By launching an interdisciplinary approach, we aim to study asceticism from literary, religious and artistic perspectives.

Venue: Grote Vergaderzaal, Leiden University Library, Witte Singel 27, Leiden. 

Programme

Day 1: Thursday 4 February 2010

09.00 Coffee/tea

09.30 Welcoming address:  Harm Beukers (Director of the Scaliger Institute) & Asghar Seyed-Gohrab  

09.45 Francois de Blois (SOAS) Strategies of encratism in east and west

Asceticism in Manichaean tradition
Chair:   Karel Innemée ( Leiden University)

10.30 Ab de Jong (Leiden University) Spiritual Elites in Late Antique Mesopotamia

11.00 Johnny Cheung (Leiden University) Asceticism from the perspective of a former Manichaean

11.30 Berndt Radtke (Utrecht University) Zuhd and Tasawwuf in the 3./9. century

12.00 Lunch (only for speakers and those invited)

Chair: Petra Sijpesteijn (Leiden University)

14.00 Remke Kruk (Leiden University) Animals and ascetes: moral lessons in theRasâ'il Ikhwân as-Safâ'.

14.30 Priscilla Soucek (Institute of Fine Arts, New York University) Religious Images in late Ottoman prayer books

15.00 Coffee and Thee

Chair: Jan Schmidt (Leiden University)

15.30 Lenny Lewisohn (University of Exeter) Asceticism in Persian and Arabic Hagiographie

16.00 Wim J. Aerts (University of Groningen) God's foolishness in not Allah's. Some considerations 

16.30 Nicolaas Biegman (Independent scholar) Muslim Mass Mysticism

18.00 Conference dinner (at the Prentenkabinet)

Day 2: Friday 5 Februari 2010

Chair:  Maarten Kossmann (Leiden University)

09.30 Nasrollah Pourjavady (University of Tehran) Vegetarianism in Early Muslim Asceticism and Sufism

10.00 Burcht Pranger (University of Amsterdam) Withdrawal and Annihilation: On the Nature of Christian Asceticism

10.30 Coffee and tea

11.00 Sander van Maas (University of Amsterdam) Gesture in Sellars, Messiaen and Francis of Assisi

11.30 Rokus de Groot (University of Amsterdam) Music and renunciation in Sufi practices

12.00 Lunch (only for speakers and those invited)

Chair: Rokus de Groot (University of Amsterdam)

14.00 Annabel Keeler (University of Cambridge) Bāyazīd (Abū Yazīd al-Bisṭāmī) and zuhd

14.30 Jan Hofstra (Independant scholar) Why construct a full-time fool for Christ's sake? Leontios of Neapolis and Symeon Salos

15.00 Coffee and Tea

15.30 Karel Innemée (Leiden University) The image of the Holy Fool in Egyptian and Syrian Christianity

16.00 Lynn Jones (Florida State University) The Rock-Cut Church of Meryam Ana, Cappadocia: An Illustrated Apocalypse?

17.00 Drinks afterward