Global Peace And Prosperity Seminar in Istanbul

We conducted this Seminar for global peace and prosperity on Bruce B. Lawrence’s most recent book, Islamicate Cosmopolitan Spirit, at a time when understanding Islam as a religion needs to be disscussed among both Muslims and Non- Muslims. As we know that religion plays a significant role in society. But when we talk about India, Religious studies are sidelined from academic institutions, but they are hotly debated in public for social and political interest. As a result, religion and religious understanding have become more limited in scope and spirit. Prophet Muhammad was more than just a Muslim. He was also cosmopolitan in nature and character, which enabled him to communicate with others either to follow him or live together peacefully. Thus, Prophet Muhmmad was the epitome of adab and cosmopolitan. Bruce B Lawrence talks about religion as adab and civilization or ecumenical. He puts both adab and civilization together and calls it the Islamicate Cosmopolitan Spirit.

Islamicate Cosmopolitan is not restricted to Islam only but also expresses the Indic Spirit “Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam (The whole world is one Family) and Technological adavncement in the West.
Prof Bruce Lawrence says that the Islamicate Cosmopolitans have had a distinctive impact across the Afro-Eurasian ecumene, at the center of civilized contact between competing yet convergent interests. Thus, the Islamicate Cosmopolitan Spirit defies East and West binaries, incorporates components of humanity’s collective past, and pursues “adab”- a moral existence that is both aesthetic and agonistic, individual and collective. The book introduces the concept of barzakh logic as a new methodology for studying Islamic history in the broader context of world history.