Description
Fifty years after the landmark World of Islam Festival transformed Britain’s cultural landscape, this special event reflects on one of the most ambitious celebrations of Islamic civilisation ever staged in the West.
Founded and curated by Ahmed Paul Keeler, the 1976 festival brought together art, scholarship, architecture, music and spirituality in an unprecedented encounter between Islam and the modern West.
Through this illustrated lecture, discussion and reflection, the event explores the festival’s lasting legacy and asks what its vision of beauty, balance and civilisational dialogue might still offer a world facing growing fragmentation, polarisation and cultural uncertainty.
About the Speakers
Abdul Rahman Azzam
Dr Abdul Rahman Azzam is a graduate of Oxford University where he completed his BA and PhD in history. He is the author of Rumi and The Kingdom of Joy (Muhammadi Trust, 2000) and in 2007 Longman published his biography of Saladin to critical acclaim.
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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