Description
Cultural visionary, Ahmed Paul Keeler, reflects on a lifetime spent exploring the relationship between Islam, civilisation, culture and the modern world.
From the countercultural movements of the 1960s to the creation of the landmark World of Islam Festival and the development of the Mizan philosophy, the conversation traces a remarkable intellectual and spiritual journey shaped by questions of meaning, beauty, balance and belonging.
Intimate, reflective and wide-ranging, the discussion offers a rare opportunity to hear one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary Islamic thought reflect on the crises and possibilities of our age. The event will be filmed and broadcasted by Al Jazeera English.
About the Speaker
Ahmed Paul Keeler
Ahmed Paul Keeler was the founder and director of the World of Islam Festival that took place in London and the UK in 1976. The Festival was remarkable in that the arts and sciences were presented as a manifestation of the unity of Islam, instead of from the Eurocentric, fragmentary point of view. The Festival was opened by Her Majesty the Queen, and was the most comprehensive exposition of Islamic culture ever to have taken place in the West, having a far-reaching impact both in the UK, the West and the Muslim world.
On April 27th 2014 Ahmed presented his ground-breaking Mizan Thesis at Cambridge University in an Illustrated Lecture, after which the University’s Centre of Islamic Studies invited him to become a Visiting Fellow to continue his work. 2019 saw the publication of his seminal work Rethinking Islam & The West: A New Narrative for the Age of Crises, followed in 2022 by A Life’s Journey: The Story behind a Book, which serves as a commentary on Rethinking Islam & The West. Applying the mizan perspective Ahmed produced Gazan Awakening in 2024 and Breaching the Mizan: From a Sacred to a Secular World in 2025.
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