Hailed as the preeminent photographer of the Muslim world, Peter Sanders discusses his life’s work and latest book, Meetings with Mountains, with Habib Ali al-Jifri, a world-leading Islamic scholar featured in this enlightening and fascinating work.

This unique visual record of holy men and women from across the Islamic world shows the spiritual depth of Islamic culture and commemorates some of its greatest sages, scholars, and saints.

Join Sanders and Habib Ali as they explain why this project is both timely and important, and what has inspired Sanders to dedicate such love and care to this project to show the true spiritual side of Islam so rarely portrayed in popular culture and the media today.

This event is supported by Amal (a Saïd Foundation programme).

About The Author

Peter Sanders

Peter Sanders is the world’s pre-eminent photographer of the Muslim world. For more than 55 years, he has captured over half a million images reflecting a rich traditional civilization filled with warmth, humanity and compassion.

He began his career in the mid 1960s as one of London’s leading rock and roll photographers, and his images of Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones, among others, are today considered classics of the period. This was a springboard which led him to his early travels throughout India and then to Morocco documenting their various faiths. In 1971 he photographed the Hajj after obtaining a unique permission for a westerner at that time.  

Peter’s physical journey ran in parallel with his own spiritual exploration. These journeys led him to document deeply, the Islamic world of peoples, architecture and geography and culture. It is the personal and spiritual insight that Peter gained that allows him to produce images that truly encapsulate the subject. More recently, Peter has been active in numerous ways to facilitate a greater spiritual and broader understanding of the Islamic faith in the western world. As an illustration of the breadth of influence, Peter received the ‘Fashion and Islamic Art 2013’ award from HH Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid al Maktoum in Dubai.   

Sanders is currently working on many new publications. In 2019 he published a fifty-year book project entitled ‘Meetings with Mountains, Encounters with Saints and Sages of the Islamic World’ with a foreword by His Holiness the Dalai Lama. This year he will launch a nine-part monograph series ‘Exemplars for Our Time’ at the Bradford Literature Festival, a collaboration with the author Michael Sugich. Alongside this, he is working on ‘Heaven, Earth and the Ten Thousand Things’, documenting the history and the lives of Muslims in China.  

He continues to travel, undertake commissions, hold photographic exhibitions, give presentations around the world, and regularly undertakes international photographic workshops ‘The Art of Seeing’ with inspires creatives in exotic and traditional locations. 

As a result of his activities Peter has been named as one of the 500 most influential Muslims in the world.  He is a permanent Ambassador of the charity MOSAIC which was established by HRH Prince Charles and prior to that was on the Board of Trustees of MOSAIC for five years. 

About The Speaker

Habib Ali al-Jifri

Habib Ali Zain al-Abidin al-Jifri is an Islamic scholar and spiritual educator based in the United Arab Emirates. He is the founder and director of Tabah Foundation, a research institute based in Abu Dhabi, UAE.